


About Revolution

by Greyline



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 1940s, Alternate Universe, F/M, Gen, Male Friendship, Politics, Post-War, Pureblood Culture, Slow Build, Terrifying Formatting, Time Travel, WIP
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-02
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2018-10-02 02:39:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 101,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10207421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Greyline/pseuds/Greyline
Summary: “It’s easy to see what you are – a politician playing potions master, a powerful warrior pretending to be a wise professor. It cannot last. The base is the potion – you, Potter, are no recluse and no coward. You won’t be able to sit by and watch our world fall apart.”"Don't call me that.""A politician? Of all the rotten purebloods I'm acquainted with, some of the most insightful observations of – and suggestions for – our world have come from you...""I meant Hadrian. It's just Harry.""Good – there ought to be a bit more justice in this world. You'll do fine in a pinch."Harry's been in the past for seven years.  In this time, he fought a war, got himself imprisoned as an enemy of Grindelwald's regime, then was effectively banned from France.  Plus, thanks to some seriously bad luck, he is now neither quite alive or dead, caught in an unnatural state where his very soul hangs in the balance.His days numbered, he finds himself working at Hogwarts.  It's somewhat foolish he took the job before considering he might run into Tom Riddle there.





	1. Chapter 1

_posted: 2017-03-02_  
_edits: div insanity_

  

THEY SAY TO NEVER DISCUSS RELIGION OR POLITICS.  
IF I WERE J K ROWLING, I WOULD FEEL **DUTY-BOUND  
** TO GIVE MYSELF **A GOOD TALKING TO** ABOUT _BOTH._

_FOREWORD _

 

 

This is here because I figure, should I ever write and post enough for this to be considered a complete fic (fingers crossed on that one), it will need a serious foreword. Perhaps not right now, perhaps not for a good while, but my OCD won't abide shunting chapters along to make room for one later on. Might as well put this placeholder in now and hope nobody gets too annoyed by it. Feel free to skip it if you wish. I do tend to witter.

This fic's composed of two primary perspectives, each self-contained, crossing between the day to day lives of both Harry and Tom. Harry's chapters are more regular than Tom's, it's about a sixty-forty split. I mention this now as I know many will be put off when Tom's voice first comes through in chapter three, and many more people dislike alternating perspectives.

The chapters span anywhere from six to ten thousand words, averaging somewhere around eight thousand. The fic is slow paced, for the most part, so don't be surprised when it continues on for a good forty+ chapters (and if I die halfway through writing it, judging by my procrastination habits). I did consider splitting it and its planned sequel down into smaller chunks, but it made the first book feel incomplete... So, sorry about that.

Besides those things, this fic was written for my pleasure rather than that of others, and definitely ignores any extra-canon that may have been revealed on things like Pottermore (and _normal_ -canon, for that matter). It was originally written as an exercise, and I now plan for it to serve as a lesson to me on _finishing_ things rather than dropping them halfway through, as I am wont to do. Having only successfully completed a few chapters, I really ought not to be posting at all, but it's possible the pressure of needing to post more might give me a bit of a kick up the backside. Of course, I ask none to actually read... If you choose to do so it is at your own peril, for my English is questionable and my plotting surely rubbish.

My beta, The Misprint, was invaluable in correcting some of my more oddly worded sentences in the earliest chapters, and helpfully directing me towards comic relief — in the form of true-story podcasts — since he came on board with the project. If you haven't ever heard of The Moth site before, I advise you check it out — in particular the tale of the Bathtub Sailer. It is relatively short, very funny, and entirely fails to set the tone intended for this fic...

Uh, anyway, as I was trying to say before I became sidetracked: My beta is a hero of gargantuan proportions for putting up with me and my project for as long as he has. I certainly wouldn't have wanted to undertake such a task, and definitely not for no pay as he has done.

If you've gotten this far into the foreword, then you will be fore _warned_ that in this case AU really _does_ mean alternate universe. The world map is _not_ the same as the one we are familiar with. Europe's borders are _not_ the same as they were in our universe's 1940s. Where this is important in the case of this fic, though, is with regards to Britain... As you may be aware, depending on your level of interest in Britain, in our universe the United Kingdom is made up of four main parts: England, (Northern) Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. (In the forties, of course, the situation with Ireland wasn't the same as it is presently, but I don't want to get into that here.)

In the AU I am working with, the United Kingdom...well, it doesn't exist, really. Instead we have Alba (made of the areas Scotland and Ireland), which, together with Iceland, makes up Albion. _Britain_ , in this AU, is actually a nation made up of England and a small part of what we know as France, both of which are in a personal union with the Netherlands (the same monarchy having control of both). As an acceptance that Alba and England are on the same small island, wizards regularly refer to it the Isles (because they're weird and ignore the border, and in this are actually oddly more realistic than the muggles in the story). As for the magical government...well, that also ignores the muggle border between Alba and England, with the Ministry being in London for convenience and Hogwarts remaining in the north.

This'll all be, rightfully so, confusing to you, so I have a map of Europe outlined, which I can send anyone so interested. The border differences may seem pointless to anyone looking in, but when I started writing this it was part of an exercise on world-building, and I have a lot of backstory with regards to events preceding this fic (which I may or may not someday publish).

Basically, I really did write this for my own purposes originally. It's involved, set in it's own alternate-earth in many ways, and I doubt it'll be an easy read when it gets going a bit. I'm probably starting to regret the world-building aspect of this, but what's done is done and no amount of timeturnering (yeah, so not a word) will fix the idiocy I clearly had when I set out. Next time I start something, I'll have to remember that making severely AU worlds is a serious undertaking, one which'll probably go very much unappreciated by anyone else because it'll just serve to confuse them. :3

*shrugs tiredly* I can only beg forgiveness for this and any future works. I sincerely hope to finish this an at least make it somewhat worthwhile.

On a sidenote, the first chapter starts with a short excerpt from a transcript, and the fic is _not_ formatted like that throughout. The excerpt _is_ important, though, and pretty much sets the tone for the entire fic (unlike the Bathtub Sailer story). Though, as this was formatted for desktop reading, sometimes things like news stories and book excerpts might come out funny if you're on a phone... So, sorry about that. I'm not clever enough to fix it.

So, all in all, I would not advise one) reading this if you're not on a desktop (preferably using Chrome, too, seeing as Firefox composites differently) or two) turning off creator's style. Some things'll get a mite funky if your screen's too narrow and I regretfully must absolve myself of all weird-formatting-shite that'll happen if my fic-skin is disabled. So, uh, sorry about that. The stylesheet won't always matter on every chapter, but it does often enough I feel I must ask people not to deactivate it, lol. Woe betide you if you're on a phone, or something... but basically, there are Easter Eggs knocking around but turning off the creator's style wrecks them — it would be like going orienteering with a satnav. And yes, this bumf-chapter is only formatted this way as a test — I'm just checking various 'letter' formats work okay for later, so pay it no mind. 

 

 

_ WARNINGS _

 

Well, it's a gentle, whisky-soaked start to the day, allowing for a nicely mild T rating... or it would, if it weren't for all the foul language. A more justified M will appear as lunchtime approaches, when we're likely to get bogged down in gratuitous violence, non-graphic heterosexual sex, swearing, use of extremely dangerous animancy, garden parties, lots of Russia, flashbacks, clinical sociopathy, governmental oppression, journalism, deadly magical artefacts, dubiousness of Dumbledore and bromance.

As we go onto evening that M might actually feel earned: There will be politics, soap-boxing, extremely harsh language, murder, attempted-murder, and marriages of convenience.

Entering the night there will be terrorism, anti-governmental societies, continued alcoholism, torture, ritualistic sacrifice, one-sided homosexual ships, open battles, the routine murder of officials, and gueri— Actually, that might've been the sequel I was plotting out. As if I've even finished writing the _first_ instalment...

Either way, think that covers it. Basically, it's gonna be breezy up the Channel.


	2. Chapter 2

_posted: 2017-03-02_  
_edits: cover alignment_

  

  

 

 

 

** ABOUT REVOLUTION **

 

_ part I  
_ A FRIENDSHIP OF FOOLS

  

 

 _Lord Jameson Potter:_ The wise thing to do, would be to send some of our best aurors and a team of half-decent hitwizards into the very bowels of that depraved, darkling forest they call Haven. Unleash enough Fyre to take out all his forces in one fell swoop.

 _Lord Chancellor Constant Mercia:_ We really cannot do that, Lord Potter. I do believe a large number of our foreign peers, all landowners and many of them with stakes in Haven Enchanted, would object to such a flagrant act of vandalism.

 _Lord Jameson Potter:_ Vandalism? We would be removing Grindelwald’s power base!

 _Lord Sabato Selwyn:_ The official stance of this body is to only openly attempt such action should this Grindelwald upstart think to attack the Isles itself.

 _Lord Jameson Potter:_ That’s bullcock, Selwyn, and you know it! Our muggle counterparts have declared war on Grindelwald’s non-magical allies… and here the Wizengamot sits, debating whether or not it would be favourable to ban the import of fossilised ashwinder eggs because they are harming the sale of local stoneadder egg ash! Preposterous!

 _Lord Geriatric O’Caoinnigh:_ If we burn down one nation’s forest, they’ll say, what’s there to stop the mad Islenders doing it to _ours_!

 _Lord Jameson Potter:_ And once again, political caution results in moral negligence and a complete lack of action… If any of you old walruses decide you actually give a damn about my opinion, I shall be sampling that new oyster dish at the Oak and Carpenter. I hear it is the most delightful treat...”

_Lord Jameson Potter leaves the session._

_Lord Sabato Selwyn:_ I curse the day Haroldir got himself blown up in that stupid muggle skirmish, foisting his idiot of a son on us all… Warmongerer, if ever there was one.

 _Lord Geriatric O’Caoinnigh:_ House Potter’s not precisely known for producing pacifists. If I didn’t know better, I’d think them all sí-kin masquerading as wizards. By the Dagda, they’re bloodthirsty enough and madder than a horde of caged pixies to boot.

 _Lord Chancellor Constant Mercia:_ Now now, fellows, let us not speak ill of our peers while they are not here to defend themselves. Back to the order of the day… The vote on the proposed legislation banning the import of ashwinder eggs…

 

_–excerpt from the transcript of the 433 rd session of the Wizengamot, 1940_

 

 

 

_april_  
into the hollow

 

 

**_ A UNIVERSE AWAY, THE _** _** Neva is frozen solid.  ** Impossibly, even from here he feels the chill of its dark, lidded waters gurgling right down to his bones._

_It doesn’t matter how far he goes – dashing, panting, running himself into the ground with no thought or thanks – he’ll never escape it._

_Proof:_

_Sharp sharp _–_ shattering… He tries to inhale, eyes pressing back into his skull, crushing into his mind– constricting, bruising, chest encased by iron-tight nothingness, a metal vice locked about his ribs– stretching, thinning– tortuously  **ripped** through a tear in reality too small to comprehend– stomach turning– the planet spinning on its axis, plummeting through space with the rest of the galaxy–_

_A desperate gasp writhes within his chest, unheard in all the empty world. He can’t breathe, might never taste air again–_

_Somewhere nowhere, things dance circles around him, strobing lights and red hair whipped up by the wind. He careens through starfields and dimensions faster than light, crossing entire nebulae in milliseconds – so fast that eternity stills. The scent of pine forest and recent rain wars with that of blood and ozone and ice, caked thick on the back of his tongue–_

_Reality struggles to right itself._

_Upending, the universe snaps shut like a Pointward uncollapsing, blessedly leaving everything a more noetic size._

_The Neva’s still here. Just hidden and lying in wait, knowing he’ll come to its embrace in the end. There’s not a sorry son of a bitch in all of the universe who can escape it forever._

_His feet hit firm ground and he doubles over panting. A cold, angry coil of magic rolls out around him, looping in and under and over itself like some vaporous celtic-knot. His watch reads two in the afternoon but the sky’s near dark, blanketed with viscous, charcoal cloud.   It really shouldn’t be._

_This isn’t where it began. It’s not even where it ended because... somehow, illogically and against the very nature of the soul, he’s still going. Too, his heart trips over itself, pounding out arithmetically like a beat by a broken drum, but his body keeps on keeping on. The dead don’t die – not really. You can’t kill that which is dead._

_Something clutches at him._

_It's so cold it burns away his robes, blackening the skin of his shoulder. It’s an icy, gnarled hand. He tries to shrug out the harsh grip but talons burst out the creature’s fingertips like a spring-loaded telescope with a stalactite core, piercing the meat either side of his shoulder. The hand withdraws again almost immediately, painful schisms in his muscles gushing foul water onto the ground below._

_Curling, grey hair atop a whithered, well-lined face set with watery blue eyes... An old woman with cruelly amused lips, wearing muggle-worthy dress that wouldn’t look out of place at sodding WI meeting… and not talon in sight._

_Batty._

_Of course – who else?_

“ _First time apparating, child?” the elderly woman spits, far more harshly than she ever did in reality._

_Her words catch him around the throat._

_To speak is to fear vomiting up the brioche and chocolate Marcia plied him with this morning. His head falls into a weak nod and he emits a funny groaning sound in the back of his throat, damp clothes rasping roughly across his fresh wound. Just this small motion is damn near enough to rend the universe again – it paints everything in sickly shades of green._

_Cackling like the stereotypical muggle-fairytale witch who likes to cook the kiddies in her oven, Batty snarls, “Not to worry, not to worry. It’ll pass. We **all** get used to it eventually.”_

_He doesn’t remember it like this._

_As calmly as he can with his heart trying to leap up his throat, Harry looks around this wrong wrong wrong place his psyche’s brought him. Slowly, he wrestles control over the spinning, recalcitrant thoughts leading him in increasingly-smaller spirals. He holds back the urge to upchuck over his own feet._

_This is a place of dichotomy – there are two places here, layered one over the other like trying to watch a muggle 3D-movie without the fuck-ugly glasses. Neither image is wholly solid, the two places flickering on and off too fast to fully register, no one ever completely superseding the other. It’s like his mind doesn’t know what sort of hell it wants to subject him to tonight._

_It’ll come to a decision soon enough: whichever way is worse for him. That’s how it works._

_On one hand, it's a lovely view; on the cracked and peeling other, its a battleground._

_He and Not-nice Batty loiter on the outskirts of an average-sized village. Make no mistake, it’s Godric’s Hill... Familiar, tiny cottages are bordered by winding, twisting lanes that rise up and turn over one another, all fighting for the right to be the village’s chief roadway; the gardens at the cottages’ fore and rear overspill with wildflowers in every colour imaginable, stretching up and over walls and window frames, trying to consume whatever life is still within. Like a warped, bastardised idea of the postcards Aunt Petunia liked collecting, the little cluster of crouching houses are topped with weed-thatched roofs (though a few have gunmetal, fish-scale slates), the splintered wooden beams of their Tudor-frames held in stark contrast to the colourfully painted lime-render between._

_Amidst a swathe of scorched wheat, he and Madam Hell-Witch stand in a field containing a large, old-looking farmhouse off to the left, decrepit and crumbling, roof sagging heavily in the centre. The road to the village-proper slithers off just beyond the battered remains of a rickety wooden fence._

_Along the road, a mangled corpse comes idling by on a bicycle._

_Harry knows what sort of dream this is now: a splice of sedentary normality, fantastic horror and utterly misplaced humour. This is why he hates his own company – one-man show featuring all-singing, all-dancing dead buddies on a backdrop of blood rainstorms and shit for snow._

_Teeth clattering, the corpse grinds out, “G’morning, Missus Bagshot,” through its disjointed jaw, throwing in a jaunty wave that belies its status as undead._

_Bringing the cloying stench of month-decaying meat with it, the corpse draws to a halt right alongside them and leans its rusty bike against a mouldy fence post. One of the thing’s torn up legs goes down to steady itself and Harry sees both its hands are melded to the bike’s handlebars._

“ _Not go’ Shepherd with yuh?” it asks genially._

_Harry turns away, lips curling with disgust._

_He catches sight of Not-Batty’s frown, amber glasses slipping down her diminutive nose._

“ _It’s not **Missus** Bagshot, as you know full well, William,” she admonishes, pushing the spectacles back into place with one frail hand. “How is your father going on since your mother’s passing?”_

_The corpse **is** William, he now sees – ex-postman to Godric’s Hill._

_The Dead Postman sighs slowly, the sound rattling round in his chest like he’s a chainsmoking dementor. What follows between Ol’ Batty and the Postman is a dull conversation Harry must’ve stored somewhere at the back of his sorry excuse of a mind; he can’t be bothered listening to it again… It all passes without context – a mirage, a flow of words he can’t quite tune out._

“ _Not great, I’m afraid. House is too quiet, ‘e says. I try an’ spend as much time as I can there, but…”_

“ _Now now, no need to feel guilty. You’ve your own family to worry on. Your young lady’s another little Coulton on the way, hasn’t she? Such lovely eyes on your little Emily. I wonder if this coming babe will be as fortunate…”_

_Harry chews on his lip, trying to will this dreamworld to change. All he manages to do is mildly lighten the ever-swirling landscape above, now-rusty clouds chasing the bloody sun across the frozen blue they’re cast within; the sky won’t stop shuddering, his will and concentration split, resulting in halfhearted sunshine and storm clouds fighting for dominance._

_Nothing ever changes._

_Will. It’s all about will… Not the dead postman, Will _– that'd be silly _–__ but the will to make a horrible dream a good one, to not slip away from Life, to find something worth holding onto._

                       “ _If you cannot find something to hold onto, all the treatment in the world will not tether you to Life.”_

_That’s not part of Mr Dead Postman and Brewery Batty’s conversation. It’s just Healer Ilyich breaking through the walls, impressing upon Harry how serious his condition is… As if he didn’t already **know**. He’s well aware he’s dead and yet still dy **ing** , a sickness of the soul that has to be countered-with-prejudice if Harry doesn’t want to find himself permanently swept back along the chill waters of Death._

_Thing is, he’s never been very good at taking orders._

_Out in the present dream-past, Not-Batty says his name. She’s not speaking to him – it’s just in passing._

“ _Young Harry and I were just heading that way now. He’s a Potter himself, you know?”_

“ _Is ‘e now?” comes the corpse’s grave dirt dry reply, mumbled from between oozing, ragged lips. “Yuh do ‘ave tha’ look about yuh. It’s in the ‘air, yuh know? Yuh don’ look much like the Duke in the face, though.”_

_Harry says nothing. This conversation will play out whether he participates or not; just like time and history and life, it doesn’t care whether or not **he** cares. Sometimes, though, ignoring something doesn’t make it go away – most the time, actually._

“ _Nonsense, William – he’s the Potter nose. Besides, he’s his Grace’s **nephew**.”_

“ _Ol’ Uncle Charlus’ bab? I’ve no’ seen ‘im since I was a teensy one alright. ‘ow is ‘e these days? Always used to give me the mos’ marv’lous candy – funnies’ flavours ‘maginable, goodness know’s where ‘e go’ it!”_

_When this was real, Harry floundered for an answer. This time he doesn’t bother. He’s the only one really here, after all, and conversing with yourself is undeniably a sign of insanity. No need to chuck a tick into yet another checkbox there._

“ _See what you’ve done! Leave the poor lad alone. He’s had quite the journey to get here and, soon as he arrives, **you** set upon him! He’s embarrassed – look, poor little lamb’s gone all **pink…** He’s quite shy.”_

_No – not embarrassed, not shy. Just apathetic and running a mild fever._

_Harry grouchily shoves his hands into his pockets... then grimaces, finding them wet, half an inch of water sitting atop an impermeable layer of nasty, cold mud. River clay. He wipes his fingers clean on old battlerobes that used to be off-white._

“ _Just ignore him, child,” Old Batty orders. “He’s a nosy one. Ooh, I remember when he was a boy much like yourself – caught him climbing through my living room window, trying to steal an antique quill of mine his current little lady liked the look of… His father gave him quite the walloping when I brought him back here,” she gestures stiffly at the collapsing building. “This is Coulton Farm, you know?”_

_The Dead Postman coughs heavily, shuffling around awkwardly while looking down at what’s left of his feet – gristle, mainly._

“ _Yeh, well, I was young an’ foolish.”_

_One of the corpse’s hands pulls off the handlebars of his bike, thick strings of gooey, putrescent flesh hanging off it like particularly thick saliva spilling out the mouth of a diseased Dogue de Bordeaux. Sending globs of fetid goop flying everywhere, the hand dives into the postbag he’s holding; when it comes back up, it pulls a small bundle of soiled envelopes with it._

“ _Anyway, ‘ere’s the post,” Sweet William declares, passing it over to Blind Batty. “If i’s really no’ too much trouble, Ma’am Bagshot.”_

_The witch doesn’t seem to notice the corpse’s strangeness. Harry assumes this must be a symptom of his morose lack of interest, more than anything else. She takes the sticky letters in one hand and tucks them away – into the aether, it seems, because they vanish faster than he can follow–_

_and then the world vanishes with them_

_Broken glass and ash and splinters crunch beneath his feet, tearing up his ankles even through the bone guards topping his boots._

_Harry comes back to the dream somewhere wind blasted, leaning out over the looming edge of a high bluff._

_He recoils in shock, one of his feet nudging the disembodied leg of a china doll over the precipice; it falls true for perhaps fifty feet, then it’s bouncing and tumbling against the rough slope of the Hollow. By the time the leg bottoms out, depositing itself on the crispy stalks of what was once an impressive, very well-kept lawn, it has shattered into a few dozen pieces._

_Godric’s Hollow… Or what’s left of it, anyway._

_Bordered on three sides by the tombstone-stumps of decapitated trees, the lawn’s empty. Nobody home. There wouldn’t be – hasn’t been ever since Grindelwald started making house calls._

“ _This is it!” Batty chirps superfluously._

 

_Holy Baba Yaga in a yurt... He remembers asking how to get down there, a lifetime ago when this was real and not just a dodgy remix his mind’s thrown together to disturb him. Even now, he’s standing on the invisible lip of the Hollow, high above the ground. As Batty begins to babble, replying to the question he didn’t bother posing, Harry looks at his boot-encased feet and–_

_like one of Dudley’s cartoons: a jolty heartbeat, a moment of incomprehension, then–_

_he falls_

_falls_

 

_tumbles_

_Its fast and it's brutal and he probably deserves it. The air swooshes across his face, making it impossible to breathe. It’s like when he plummeted from the portkey but without the comparatively gentle landing; instead of thumping into backpack and wet sand, his dream propels him onto the burned bracken and pointy rocks at the Hollow’s base like he’s a bullet blasted from a gun– and_

_black_

 

_He really **does** deserve it._

 

                                                  – _then he’s blinking up at the air – brickdust and damp – flat on his back. His head throbs, vision swims out of focus, flickering between a world of verdant green foliage and one of charred leaves, churned lawn._

_Will. It’s all about will._

_What is gravity?_

_Down is down and up is down and if he doesn’t find something to hold onto, he’ll slip away into Death._

_Spine arching, contorting up off the grass, his eyes are ineluctably drawn down down down, far past the rim of the Hollow and past Batty’s cruel maw, a twist of demonic firelight flickering in her eyes and at the back of her throat… His gaze comes to rest on a city, which was just stormclouds once-upon-a-moment-ago. Gravity tugs against his navel – he should be falling into the city’s crisscrossing streets and sharp spires._

_He doesn’t._

_The Eiffel Tower leers at him, beckoning his body to plummet down on its peak._

_He won’t. Here, in this place, even though it doesn’t seem like it, **he is boss** – dream or not, he refuses to meet any kind of end impaled on the tip of an overrated, gaudy tourist attraction._

_He heaves his weak, leaden limbs from the grass. Under-over he turns, face flat in the mud like a foot’s stomping on the back of his head._

_He crawls._

_On and on, through dirt and the residue of fire he crawls, leaving Batty and her unnatural malice behind. His mind swims with a flickering montage of memory, of love and laughter and friends: Hermione smiling, Ron laughing, Boris clapping him on the back, Astrid punching him in the face, Siggy in a white dress…_

_It’s not enough to ground him._

_His mind tumbles end over end through a land of snow and scattered bomb casing and shattered glass, of brackish blood and equally red hair floating in the water, grit sifting through it. A teeth-rattling magical aura lurks just beyond tangible perception. He’s in a world where the Manor in the Hollow crumbles from within green light, life blasted from it at the end of an unforgiving wand._

_Nothing can be quantified… **T** **his** can’t be._

_Still looking for that willpower – down the back of the sofa seems as likely a place as any._

_A tall, oak door is suddenly before him; it’s set with two thin windows leaded in a diamond pattern. Harry drags himself level with it, a scratchy chuckle crawling up his throat. He clutches the doorknob and, using it to hoist himself upwards – downwards, upwards again? – flops bodily against it, chest to toe to forehead. The glass of the door’s windows is broken and missing, shards digging into his cheek – and wind howls through their absence._

_Miles away, Batty insists he’s reached his destination._

_Grandiose._

_Potter taste – his uncle’s taste._

_The manor has a heavy air about it, that of a place which has witnessed great evil in the not-so-distant past. The outer walls of the building are fireblasted – if not Grindelwald’s, then possibly Jameson’s work. Still, the seared stone stands solid, the square building’s four floors rising with no signs of precariousness, but the dormers in the attic, along with all the other windows, have blown out and the roof’s caved in like the one at Coulten Farm._

_Through the space where the hall windows used to be, Harry can see a dark-haired woman weeping brokenly on her knees, all keening cries and oily tears spilling down to flood the flags of the entrance hall. No husband to abide, no dear son to cosset... absent nephew, niece and sister-in-law… Marcia’s sorrow is enough to fill the hall with dark water, tears congealing into a deep, syrupy pool. It snakes far into the offing – farther than the hall should even extend – freezing over only a few dozen feet away, where several impossible, dangerous-looking ships skulk in the darkness._

_“ Mäajst du jan greiwen Fluss? De haft kjeenen Dreiw, doch du woo eena de auseenst_." 

_Siggy._

_She whispers in the air, a soft croon that promises pleasure to come. His head turns to her automatically…_

_Nobody’s there._

_Nobody’s there – nobody’s **ever** there… especially not **her**._

                                                                                                      “Sir?”

_Mostly back to hands and knees, Harry finds himself slumped in the wet, ruined entranceway. Gracelessly he moves forwards, trying not to slip on the approaching ice as one hand reaches out to comfort Aunt Marcia, but the grey fogging his vision makes stability elusive. Her image undulates like a shadow cast on a wall by a candle’s flame, shimmering and shifting, stuttering as a hologram or projection._

                                                                             “Uh, sir?”

_Blending and replacing, sweeping Marcia away, a jagged efflorescence, a replica of himself forms. Piercing, frozen eyes, green like the purest curse, and a stolid set to the jaw… He knows that face, that expression – knows it from one of his better days…_

_White gossamer descends from the absent ceiling, drifting eerily on the air. Briefly, a wistful, fading smile twitches on his doppelgänger’s lips._

_Curious, wondering if this mirror of a man before him has the will Harry himself lacks, he pulls himself up and shifts closer to get a better look at his doppelgänger. With rigid shoulders and legs set into the ground at a ready-for-action, forty-degree angle, it seems like h–_

_Something warm presses into his damaged shoulder, nudges and shakes – no, **hot** , too hot and scalding, roasting his flesh, skin peeling away –_

                                  “Sir? Um, excuse me – I’m really sorry to wake you, sir, but we’re closing the reading rooms now…”

                  – _the panes of this world shatter from the inside… and wind howls through their–_

He jolted upright, quill stuck to his forehead, curse on his tongue and a sizable hole already smoking in the bookshelf before him.

_Spectacular._

     Just another day in post-war paradise…

After apologising profusely to the librarian he almost blew to bits (while the man in question stared at Harry with wide eyes and stuttered apologies of his own for startling him in the first place), Harry collected up his pile of books, leaving behind those that weren’t permitted beyond the reading rooms. Clutching the unwieldy stack of texts, he slowly worked his way up the numerous sets of stairs leading back to the library’s foyer, wishing they had escalators.

His step quickened once he came to the ground floor – the whole place would shut in less than five minutes and there was no way he wanted to get trapped in here… _again_.

There was a copy of _Liniyata_ haphazardly folded on the unmanned checkout desk; Harry twisted his head to read the half-visible headline: _JEFE JAPE CAPTURED IN SOFIA FOLL–_

Well, it wasn’t _all_ bad news.

Jape was a Weather Wizard of devastating ability who, more than having been responsible for setting numerous storms against the Muggle Allies over the course of the war, in a fit of anger caused a tsunami that wiped out most the indigenous population of the Black Outlying Islands. His mother had been in uproar for the last week.

 _...ior to the war was already infamous for his attack on the colonies, which_  
_saw more than two hundred magicals and eight hundred muggles dead in_  
_a single day in 1884. His capture is credited to ICLED operatives who had_  
_been tracking Jape utilising magical residue left following his turn of the ce-_  
_ntury destruction of Galveston, a city in the Republic of Texas, and the_  
_1905 Pacific Storm, which left ten thousand people dead._

 _ROT citizen, Jape is due to be extradited to the United States, the first and_  
_most regular target of the numerous crimes he is responsible for perpetrat-_  
_ing over the last eighty years._

_President Raul Navarro, in a rare international appearance, is due to arr–_

Not bad news at all.

“Interested in foreign affairs?” a warm, feminine voice asked.

Harry _hmmmed_ and looked up from the paper, finding a short, willow-thin young woman was now standing behind the desk, patiently waiting for him to allow her to catalogue his books. She had a fair, curly bob and cautious, citrine eyes.

“Aren’t we all?” he replied uncertainly, pushing his books over the table. “Can’t pretend nothing’s wrong this day and age.”

Except in the Isles. Islenders could _always_ pretend everything was A-OK, even if the world burned around them.

The young woman snorted unattractively, making him smile, and pushed a loose curl behind her ear.

Echoing his thoughts, she muttered, “We can certainly pretend,” almost too quietly for him to make out.

This girl made _him_ look cheerful. Quite a feat.

She finished checking out his books, stamped them with a return date and passed them back to Harry. He jammed them into his overstuffed bag, mumbling complaints at their refusal to go in without a fight.

His heavy bag swung against his side with every step, bulging with files and folders, in addition to some of the more generic books ALMA allowed wizards to take off the premises. The common books weren’t much better than those back in Château Potiers’ smaller library – just different and newer. Perhaps, scouring them might help him understand some of the more complicated arithmantical theories that had long evaded his comprehension? If he were ever to successfully adapt them for his hopeless attempts to hack together a portkey, he’d need all the bookhelp he could get.

He snorted. Six years and going strong – there wasn’t about to be a portkey any day soon.

Beyond the great glass front of the Ancient Library, the day was still warm despite its windiness. Yet, after nearly blowing a hole through an unlucky librarian, no amount of environmental clemency was about to brighten his crappy day.

Amidst the straight-edged forms of imposing, rain-hounded buildings, harried muggles swarmed with the evening rush. Clouds pelted after them, seeming in as much a hurry as the citizens below; shop canopies sewn in myriad fabrics, patterns and colours billowed up under the wind’s hands, desperate to break free of their holdings; store signs swung merrily back and forth, squeaking out a dissonant tune of grinding flats and teeth-jarring highs across the commuters; and the few trees around had been stripped of their blossom, tossing it through the air to come to rest in grubby-white and -pink piles in overflowing gutters.

He’d only taken four or five steps out into the busy street when he experienced an icy, sinking feeling – literally. Like a freshly-risen inferi had suddenly grasped at his trouser leg, he stumbled, barely managing to prevent himself from taking a tumble in the street like a damned alcoholic octogenarian. Slumped shoulders, Harry looked down. What on Earth decided to take a shot at him now? His brow fell gloomily as he immediately identified the problem: his left foot was completely submerged in a grimy-looking puddle. Cold, gritty water sloshed around his ankle and down into his shoe, encasing his stupid foot in a disgusting, slightly-slimy layer of sludge.

He couldn’t escape it in his dreams, he couldn’t escape it in the waking world. No matter where he went, dirty water seemed to follow.

He managed to catch the sigh that surged up his throat; almost flambéing a librarian be damned, he actually had plenty of practice at not outwardly showing such aggravation. However, the certain element of pessimism (the strongest, most hard-won sort found in those who knew happy endings never last) filtering through his sleep-shuttered eyes was plenty visible. No matter how hard you try to hide behind your masks and facades, the eyes truly are the windows to the soul – his was a dull, mangled mess of apathy and rancour. Not for the first time today – not even the first this _hour_ – his heart was fully saturated with a quiet acceptance of the theory that just about anything that could possibly go wrong in his life _would_.

And it would do so with gusto, he surmised drearily, thinking of his own singed hair and the prospect of completing his journey with five wet, squelching toes rubbing uncomfortably against the expensive hide of his shoes. He thought they called it the Law or Sod… or perhaps, Murphy’s Law. He didn’t know the identity of the sadistic bastard who repeatedly pitched circumstance against him… It didn’t matter, anyway. He just knew he’d like to have a damn good word with them – or, at least, his wand would.

The puddle situation was certainly… _regrettable_  (where ‘regrettable’ meant it sucked the purulent, sore-ridden behind of an incontinent donkey). Unfortunately, there wasn’t much Harry could do with regards to his crappy predicament: Drenched shoes and sodden foot be damned, being a wizard (easily able to take care of such problems) wasn’t much use when in the heart of Muggle Angland, right out in the open for all to see. So he was buggered, standing on this busy thoroughfare, half in the puddle and half on cracked, weed-infested pavement, swamped by a swift tide of some of the millions of muggles that dominated the Isles and, therefore, the city.

Perhaps, he thought not for the first time since arriving in town this morning, he ought to have taken the bus. If those things weren’t always so crowded with people – closed-in, like travelling in the belly of a rumbling beast wrought of metal and glass – he would’ve done. If _he_ weren’t so worryingly out of touch, in these times, with just _how_ one paid to travel on a muggle bus, he probably would take one, claustrophobia or no.

The city of London, while having been badly scarred by the events of the last decade, remained shockingly upbeat despite its ordeal. Tattered – yes. Ragged around the edges – yes. But not defeated.

Overhead, a spring rainstorm (probably liable in the creation of the puddle Harry just stuck his foot in) seemed to already be petering out. Most the locals ignored it entirely, going about their business as if there were no rain at all; though, a small group of middle-aged, snobby-looking women loitered between tall jars of cut flowers outside a florist’s, peering suspiciously up at the sky beyond the shop’s canopy.

Uptight and smartly dressed, suitcase-shielded, umbrella-wielding men sped past Harry, trying to get from point A to point B as quickly as was possible without bumping into their doppelgänger (probably terrified of looking like clumsy cocks if they did). Small groups of younger women were dotted among the mottled, grey-black mass of commuters, chatting brightly with upturned lips and umbrellas. Here and there, shabbily-clad children scurried and weaved between their better-off cousins, causing mischief from the shadows and pinching anything not watched closely enough.

Each and every one of those present was blind, oblivious to the countless piles of rubble around them… Absent buildings like gaps in a broken smile.

Unnoticed in the midst of them all, Harry finally gathered enough courage to try removing his foot from the puddle. He shifted carefully, grimacing as a sharp lance of pain shot up his leg before easing its way into a dull, throbbing ache somewhere in the vicinity of his knee. Yep… seriously spectacular.

Groaning roughly, he made to step forward and continue on his way…

Something darted through his peripheral vision–

                                                                       a shock of red curls

                                                                                            –and Harry’s heart jolted.

Instantly disregarding the discomfort in his leg, his head snapped at the vivid colour, frantically clutching for it. The redhead he found was unfamiliar, though; his eyes slipped over her like a Killing Curse off any Necromancer worth his salt.

He berated himself. The ease with which something so simple brought him distraction was sodding ridiculous – more than that, it was _embarrassing_.

Grumbling to himself beneath his breath, annoyed by both his stupidity and the puddle, he garnered more than one look of amusement from the muggles passing. A young boy with fair hair and coal-smudged skin (and, for a stretching moment, Harry recalled the ash-coated cheeks of another little boy, huddling in the snow with a bucket of dirty water clutched between his frostbitten fingers) actually laughed at him outright; the boy bounded off down the street, purposely parading through the puddles dotted about as if mocking Harry’s predicament.

He shot the boy a gla–

_Bang!_

_BANG-click-pot bang buh-BANG!_

Shattering through the child’s amusement– a cacophonous series of short, sharp noises shooting down the street– ricocheting between buildings like a particularly violent flock of marbles were attac–

Viscerally, Harry ducked for cover.

Between one blink and the next, he found himself sequestered between a trio of wheelie-bins outside a greengrocer’s, leg screaming in protest at the fast, unplanned movement. Harry’s eyes, no longer drained by the Melancholy but gleaming bright with adrenaline, frantically scanned his surroundings for danger.

He found none.

The sudden disturbance had startled more than one of the muggles… but the aggravating street boy was not perturbed. Harry could see the child from his position behind the bins; the boy was still laughing at him – _pointing_ now, too.

_Bang-BANG–_

_buhbahngchsh hicuh-beaugh-eygh buhhhh-sshhhhwwwwwuh wwwrrr…_

The angry noise quieted for a moment… then choked, coughed… and finally wheezed its way down into a low hum. A stubby, tan car backed out an alleyway across the street. The commotion was nothing more than an ailing automobile struggling to hit its stride.

Stupid. Sometimes he was just so damn _stupid_.

Discreetly slipping his twitching wand back up past the hard, starched cuffline of his shirt sleeve, Harry emerged from behind the overfilled bins feeling rather deflated. Shaking off some browning, damp vegetable leaves that escaped the rubbish only to stick onto his already-filthy left shoe, he reached into his jacket, pausing for a moment in deliberation: there were two silver flasks in his inner-pocket – one simple Calming Draught and one filled with Chin Up (the potion equivalent of a Cheering Charm).

His eyes again finding the giggling bugger of a boy, Harry’s expression managed to achieve both reproachful and righteously stern. A low growl rasped its way up his throat, scaring the boy off.

 _Great…_ now he was reduced to intimidating ignorant little children. He sighed again. Though he’d much rather have some Chin Up, he should probably knock back a dose of the Calming Draught.

Tossing down a mouthful of the foul concoction, a wave of serenity washed over him; it quickly cleared, leaving Harry with a sense of calm purposefulness, allowing him to think more coherently. Truthfully, he was more annoyed at himself for his reaction to something as a car backfiring, as he was with the little urchin for poking fun at him. If Harry carried on like this, someone would haul him into the spellshock ward at l’hôtel-Dieu, whether he was supposed to keep his sorry behind out of Paris or not. He needed to contain his skittishness better in the future, lest someone (by Veles, please not his _mother_!) notice.

As he tucked away the flask of Calming Draught, Harry’s attention was caught by an older, distinguished sort of gentleman passing; the man stopped for a moment, leaning heavily on a mahogany cane. The other man shared a brief, understanding look with him, causing Harry to grimace back sheepishly. With an acknowledging nod, the elder man straightened his already-meticulously-pressed tweed jacket, then continued on without a word.

Sometimes none was needed.

Today’s date was the ninth of April, nineteen forty-six.

This fact wasn’t any surprise to Harry (who, with his usual luck, made his way back onto the main street only to stick his _right_ foot into the diabolical-puddle that previously ambushed his left), mainly because April ninth had followed April eighth and April seventh… so on and so forth. In fact, nineteen forty-six had, even for him, followed nineteen forty-five and -four… all the way back to nineteen thirty-nine. Prior to _that_ , of course, it was the nineteen nineties – a staggering truth he’d long since learned not to dwell on more than strictly necessary.

In the half-decade or so that had passed since Harry Potter, on one fateful morn, slipped through a crack in time, he’d changed drastically. The general effect of maturing in the nineteen forties was not inordinate. For a little boy originally raised by foul-tempered muggles, often kept locked in a dark cupboard, the past few years had wrought in him a revolution of mind. There were parts of him he considered indelible, bastions of self that all people had, but Harry was positive he would’ve grown into a very different person had he not dumped himself half a century in the past.

Wearing a frown – a thing ever-present at his mouth – this grown-Harry continued on his way. Through sheer stubbornness, he forced himself to walk straight and stable, trying in vain to ignore the slightly skittish animal that lay perpetually curled in his chest. The Calming Draught worked no miracles – he tended to be so stressed at any given time that it never mellowed him long.

Walking properly was hindered by the uncomfortably squelchy sensation of having to do so with water inside _both_ his shoes. His socks were like some sort of loose, blood-slippery pelt wrapped about his feet; he tried very hard not to think of the way William-the-Dead-Postman’s rotting flesh had stretched out his veiny skin, which threatened to rupture, or how the corpse’s decaying meat had come away in long strings like some foul, too-gooey jerky.

Urgh. His subconscious hated him.

Thinking of the dream was still better than considering what would happen when his mother saw the state of his shoes. She would have his head – they were disgustingly expensive, made by some muggleborn designer or another.

His pace picked up.

On the streets, the muggle population began to thin as the hour grew late. High above, brilliant last shards of sunlight cut through the urbanity here and there, casting pronounced shadows across the city. Harry chose to stick to the lesser-populated residential streets and side alleys, hoping not to get too lost in the warren they formed. Idly, he wished the Islen Ministry of Magic would get off their flabby arses and reëstablish the London Apparation Terminals. The war had been over for months, for fuck’s sake.

The Islen Ministry was run by a bunch of blibbering idiots… Or just a horde of sadomasochistic pilot fish, all circling whichever evil power the whorish wind was currently blowing best. Previously, Harry might’ve said the climate was fairer for Sabato Selwyn and his merry band of butmunching minions; now, he thought, times were changing. Given the events of the last year, it seemed Dumbledore’s day had finally dawned – may the gods have mercy on all…

It was the Ministry who had the LAT system shut down. Harry managed to piece together, mainly from hearsay, the worrying string of unfortunate occurrences and institutional incompetence leading up to the system’s decommission.

Unsurprisingly, all of it was the government’s fault. Is there ever any other kind of problem?

According to his uncle – a man seated on the Wizengamot until his timely demise the previous year – more than one unlucky wizard fell prey to a well-aimed bomb. Several wizarding businesses got destroyed, despite the relative safety magical wards were capable of providing. Basically, going into muggle London was dangerous and not advised – that was the official reason given for the LATs closure.

 _Off_ the record, some citizens kept using magic in front of muggles, preserving the homes and lives of the non-magicals they lived alongside. Resultantly, the Islen Obliviation Squad were working overtime during the Blitz, furiously trying to cover up the altruistic actions of those rare few wizards who weren’t complete ego-centrical arseholes. Coïncidently, Obliviators were _expensive_.

A bit of bad luck (and unwillingness, on the Ministry’s part, to fork out overtime or increase hazard pay for the IOS) was apparently enough reason for the entirety of Muggle London to be boycotted. Only the gods knew how many muggle families suffered for this callousness, their politicking magical neighbours choosing not to better protect the entire city but instead beat a swift retreat to areas like Diagon and Vertic Alleys, or Orch Mead, fleeing like spiders from a Basilisk.

While Harry and co. were entrenched in mud and snow, creeping through explosive wardnets and streets guarded by some of Grindelwald’s most feared lieutenants (streets often teeming with Inferi), Islenders were hiding out in their bedrooms, keeping schtum and pretending the war didn’t exist.

Yes, he had more than one bone to pick with the Islen Ministry over the cowardly behaviour they exhibited during the war. Though politics might be a sewer in a hurricane, he still found himself almost regretting that his father held all active Potter seats of responsibility. If Harry was on the Wizengamot, he would run riot. Not that he really fancied the gig – it was all paperwork, red tape and boozing on the job.

As far as he was concerned, the Isles was damn fortunate its muggle leaders hadn’t folded under the pressure-front preceding the war and never allowed the fight fully homeside. They were also lucky that, when push came to shove, Dumbledore was around to tighten a noose around the Good Lord’s dick. Harry shuddered to imagine how it would’ve all gone down if the _Ministry_ had to argue their way out of Grindelwald’s mass-slaughter for the greater good.

He supposed, despite everything, the shuttered magical population of the Isles never really got how bad things were out there. The war scarcely touched them, even though a decent number of properties were destroyed. A few dozen decimated enclaves and a whole ton of rubble were nothing to compared to watching millions of sick muggles waste, starving and besieged. Really, what’s a building when you have magic? Any sorry sod with a wand could build an adequate dwelling – just look at the Burrow.

Though there were some dozens of casualties in the Isles, many _hundreds of thousands_ didn’t make the end of the war on the continent… and that was only to speak of magicals – things were even direr for muggles. Harry, though, somehow pulled through despite the odds stacked against him… Sometimes, he wished he hadn’t. Of course, that was probably just because the Melancholy seemed to have gotten its hands on a megaphone.

Even physically, he didn’t escape entirely unscathed. The long scar that stared pinkishly up at him when he dressed in the mornings was testament to that; it cut deep into his right hip, a thick, twisting rope of scar tissue arching upwards in a steady curve all the way across his abdomen, coming to rest over his heart. Like that on his forehead, it was one of those scars still in the habit of twinging years after it was received – a powerful black curse wrought it, cast expertly by a true master of such atrocities.

There was some damage to his leg, too, which liked to creep up on him and (almost literally) stab him in the foot at the most inopportune times – he often found himself threatening the useless thing that he’d head down Medic Alley and get himself a nice, quick amputation. If you discounted the puddle incident, though, he hadn’t actually stumbled in weeks and held hope he wouldn’t be doing so again in the near future (and hopefully not in public, if he had to fall like a cripple at all). It was an injury that, however well tended, put pay to any dreams his cynical self still harboured of working in law enforcement, just as surely as some of his less heroic actions in the war did.

Slowly, carefully – and lightly rubbing a hand across the physical evidence of a duel that almost killed him – Harry turned onto Hanover Square, catching first sight of his intended destination. He noted its looming presence but didn’t bother closely examining the building – appearances could be remarkably deceptive. Just look at _Siggy_ – a spectacular, mercurial woman who was, mentally and magically, far sharper and more vicious than her frail, delicate form belied, right up to her regretfully sticky end… That, though, didn’t bear thinking about if he wanted to maintain any level of composure.

Screw it all – don’t think about pink erumpets.

A vain hope.

There were just too many memories to contend with and Harry’s ability in the mind arts – especially those requiring the most self-control – was shaky at best and downright dangerous at worst. No matter how hard he tried to school his mind, he could not do so without losing all connexion to reality. Thus, he was forced to consciously contend with thousands of horrible, fluttering images that whispered across his thoughts: grime-coated bodies piled high in long, deadly shadows that painted the streets grey; legions of the Dead up and walking… walking and hungry for life; children so frail another missed meal would spell the end of them; ever-present echoes and cries, screams and whimpers… hopeless shrieks resounding through the void he had the audacity to call his _mind_.

He shuddered.

Something akin to hoarfrost sank its claws an agonising inch deeper into an indescribable, inexorable part of him… an aspect of himself that was formless rather than physical, yet was bared prone to the threat of _beyond_ , bracing itself against the frigid call of… of _something_ , of _Death_ , all the same.

 _It’s all about will_ , he reminded himself for the thousandth time today.

     Finding his was a chore best left to history, yet–

He clamped down on his emotions and the icy sense of Death obediently retreated to the back of his mind, curling up like a wounded beast. All the same, he should’ve had the Chin Up. Taking it now wouldn’t be productive – it clouded his thoughts with unnatural cheerfulness and ate up his common sense. Harry was due to meet a Slytherin in a few minutes, so he wanted his wits about him.

 _No_ , he could get by without the potion.

He knew well enough it didn’t do to dwell on the numerous flagrant displays of his failings. Judge, jury and executioner, his mind insisted on tossing his mistakes at him again and again, insistent he never forget and never sleep, begetting in him such apathy that half the time he couldn’t even bring himself to _care_ he was slipping from Life.

    ‘ _Have it your way, then…’_

Ah... the smug pronouncement of a passive-aggressive narcissist.   Too right, though.

_I’ll just roll over and let you at it, shall I? Move on, nothing to see here…_

It was like believing there was one more step on the stairs when you weren’t paying attention: the jolting thought brought an end to his daze, returning the world to the sort of sharp focus that could slice a man bloody.

Better he attempt to think only of the victory found in the war, on the long-since-absent hope that kept him pushing through the darkness… At least, it did until Colina got himself removed from the conundrum of life, leaving Harry’s soul floundering in its mortal _ish_ form. He needed to remember, he might have a _very_ long future awaiting him (though he never thought he’d survive to see it) in this past he was living through – far more than expected and something he probably ought to consider worth holding onto.

      All about _will_.

Setting his mind to the future had the side-effect of reconnecting his legs and mind, the latter snidely pointing out it would probably be sensible to turn his maudlin thoughts to pondering the upcoming meet-and-greet with Master Slughorn. He still had to work out why in the Wilderness the wizard wanted to see him, something he hadn’t understood ever since his father informed him the appointment existed a month prior.

Despite trying so hard to do just that, for the most part he found himself concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other… and the warping leather of his decidedly still-squelchy shoes.

A couple of minutes later, he reached his destination. Any opportunity for considering the engagement had passed.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm pretty sure all formal apologies were made on the previous page, but for those who missed that: I'm very very sorry. I'm happy to answer any and all questions put to me — just PM.


	3. Chapter 3

_posted: 2017-03-09_  
_edits: missing speech marks_

  

 

 **"Harry, I feel I have failed you.** For you to know and understand so acutely, at such a young age, how truly important it is to surround yourself with others, to take and offer comfort... Most your age take these things for granted – friendship, family and love. It's only when these things are ripped from them that they realise what they had... and how  _vital_ it was to their being. We don't form our best memories on our own – they are forged through fire and laughter, wrapped in those about us, and memory is everything we are. Take a person's memories and you might as well be killing the person.

"It breaks my heart to see you, son of the man who made my memories what they are, who made me who I am, so damn _aware_ of the world and all its horrors. If I could have known... could have protected you from that, I would have done. If I ever get my hands on Petty Petunia and that lardball she dares to call 'husband'..."

Harry smiled and it was empty. "I guess we've _both_ been in prison all this time... sorta." He shrugged. "You get used to being on your own, if it's always been that way... It's really not so bad."

"Not so bad... _Not so bad?_ " Sirius choked out through a hacking bark of a laugh. "You know how horrid the dementors are, what they can do to a man, so take this as meant – I'm honestly not sure which of us has endured more, suffered more this last decade."

" _You_ , of course. You didn't have anyone to talk to for ten years. Hagrid was a mess after ten days."

"He's a gentle soul, for all his love of monsters," Sirius agreed blithely, completely missing the point. "But you, Harry, have been hurt by those who should have loved you. You lost a childhood... one I should have given to you. To me, that is unforgivable."

 

                                _–conversation between Harry Potter and Sirius Black, spring 1994_

 

 

 

 _ april _  
an encounter with a slytherin

 

 

 

 ** IN THE BEST, THE ** ** friendliest and simplest relations, flattery or praise is necessary, just as grease is necessary to keep wheels turning smoothly. **

Had Harry not long been aware of this particular bit of bullshit and come to, however begrudgingly, accept it as a truth, he probably would’ve got the hell out of Dodge the moment it became clear he was way out his comfort zone. Upon arriving, mere minutes showed this little ‘informal get together’ Harry was invited to, was nothing greater than a chance for another man to preen and posture and, too, boast accomplishment on behalf of he whom he hoped to entice – namely Harry himself.

Horace Slughorn, it transpired, was a jovial-faced, well-built man whose self-effacing countenance was belied by the fact he was Slytherin alumnus. The rotund man actually _taught_ at Hogwarts, in fact – it was the only reason Harry bothered getting out of bed for this shit – and was one of Snape’s predecessors as head of that particular house.

Harry was shown into the Speaking Room by a disgruntled-looking gentleman trussed up in too-formal, muggle penguin-garb; Harry dripped fetid puddle water in the club’s foyer, which probably contributed to his frosty reception as much as his appalling attitude did. The room was wide, enclosed by a deceptively low ceiling bedecked with navy silk banners and filled with little tables, booths and armchairs Harry didn’t think looked all that comfortable.

Harry observed the wizard he was to visit from the doorway. Instantly, he found himself pitched into ruminations of the gaping chasm separating the stoic personality and affectations of Snape from the apparent openness of Horace Slughorn. The two men couldn’t be more different on the surface. Dressed in a plum-velvet waistcoat over an almost-completely-hidden white shirt, with sharply-tailored slacks in dove grey and shiny shoes, the Slytherin idly perused a copy of the Howler, one plump leg inelegantly crossed over the other.

Slughorn was obviously punctual, given he arrived first and was already situated one of the button-back armchairs that, given his size, must have been a tight fit. Harry made his presence known and, after some non-verbal pleasantries, found himself standing sullenly before Slughorn, watching on as the man poured out a generous glass of what appeared to be top-shelf uisge; it seemed Harry’s father was right when he described the Slytherin as a man who liked his expensive libations.

The moment the disgruntled usher had snapped the door closed, Slughorn began to speak.

“Welcome, welcome,” he greeted warmly.

Harry, for his part, remained stiff, spine ramrod straight for the world to see. On the inside he housed a twitching ball of nervous energy – a bloody billiwig nest had taken up residence in his abdomen, making him feel mildly nauseated… Or perhaps the churning sensation was just that third dose of Calming Draught curdling with the brioche and Chin Up he had for breakfast.

“Please have a seat, Heir Potter,” the friendly man continued, gesturing with one, surprisingly nimble looking hand. “I have heard much about you.”

“And I you, Master Slughorn,” Harry replied flatly, adding a deferential-as-possible bow of his head.

Sure, snobbish society said Slughorn ranked way below Harry in status, but he’d always found it advantageous to pretend to such people – the ones with visibly over-swelled egos – that they had his absolute respect. Besides, though he may be well adept at playing the role – to a point – society expected of him, it wasn’t like Harry ever truly pandered to the facetious ideals of the rich and the pure.

“It was all good, of course,” Slughorn insisted, taking a generous gulp of his drink.

It wasn’t immediately obvious whether that comment meant the Slytherin had heard only good things of Harry or the other way around. Exactly as intended, most likely. Bless the man’s clogged-arteries, he was a politician. Lovely.

Accepting one of the plush, rubbish armchairs, Harry leaned forwards slightly in a show of non-arrogance. He obviously was right in having thought he would need his wits about him for this meeting – Slughorn hadn’t disappointed yet. Even though the man kept his innate slyness well hidden beneath a veneer of personability, he’d have to work quite a bit harder to hide it from someone like Harry. Reclining in his chair could easily be misconstrued as pigheadedness by the Slytherin, rather than mere confidence; leaning forward, Harry felt, was more liable to be regarded as earnest than brash.

For the first time in years – the first time _ever_ , actually – Harry was grateful for the tedious stretch of time he spent at Natasha’s court. It taught him the cues of others well

Slughorn nodded in what could only be approval. Harry felt a relaxed sort of satisfaction fall on his shoulders, erasing a portion of the day’s stress – an approving Slytherin was an accommodating one.

“I must apologise for the public setting,” the other man commented carelessly, waving one hand around demonstratively while the other passed Harry a drink. “The private rooms are awfully dark and stuffy – you know how old clubs like this are! I knew you would prefer to chat out here.”

Harry nodded absently, idly taking note of Slughorn’s act of casual omniscience – Dumbledore eat your heart out. Now he had stock of the other man, Harry’s attention turned to their venue.

The Speaking Room at the Oriental Club was papered in a dark, midnight flock. Besides the one Harry entered through, two more exits were partially obscured by the silk drapes hanging from various places across the ceiling; they were the same colour as the walls and broke up the vast space in a way that made his eyes dart from place to place, trying to make sure nothing untoward lurked in the shadows. Betwixt fluttering fabric, small groups of tables faced one another, clustered with straight-backed seats. Grey chesterfields lounged about the distastefully opulent room – some solitary, some with company and many staring resolutely out the window, as if too embarrassed to acknowledge their surroundings.

Dissatisfied with his environment, Harry tossed back half the glass of uisge in one go. The flavour was sharp and woody, lingering bitterly at the back of his mouth but warming the unrest in his stomach, soothing away vestigial tension. Seeking to rally whatever abiding traces of Gryffindor courage remained in his heart, he decided to let the booze get the ball rolling.

Harry whet his lips and enquired, “I heard you asked to meet after speaking with my uncle some time back?”

A polite enough line, though it could hardly be mistaken for a pleasantry even by the densest. Harry disliked few things more than pointlessly chasing doxies around in circles when a spell would do just as well to corral them. He’d always preferred to just cut to the curses before calculation and common sense could override his nerve.

“Oh ho! Straight to the chopping!” Slughorn exclaimed in apparent delight. “A Gryffindor, then, if ever there was one. Though, if you are as hard a worker as I’ve heard, perhaps you would have made a fine Hufflepuff… _Yes_ , you would have done well with dear Celeste, for sure,” the man rambled, only deigning to clarify his nonsense when Harry made a small noise of confusion low in his throat. “Celeste – the Lady Bones, that is – is our rather lovely Head of House Hufflepuff.”

Harry dutifully nodded his understanding, surprised to feel a small smile slip onto his lips, muscles aching as they tried to accommodate an expression he had long been past need for.

Bittersweet. That was all thoughts of Hogwarts for him.

“Perhaps, Master Slughorn,” Harry agreed with a false amount of blitheness, “but we can’t ever be sure. I didn’t go to Hogwarts myself. Perhaps I would’ve been in your _own_ illustrious house?”

Sipping at his uisge, the other man leaned back, seeming pensive for some reason.

 _Didn’t go to Hogwarts…_ What a joke.

Memories of everyday life faded with time, yet so many good ones involving that castle remained: playing games with his Gryffindor housemates, studying in the warm glow of the Common Room fire, the freedom and solitude of flying in all weathers over treetop and mountainside around the Alban school…

None of those things had yet come, of course. Other than his new parents, only two people in the entire world knew the full story of the accidental time-travel that brought Harry trip-tumbling to the forties.

Self-erasure was the name of the game…

No wonder Harry could muster barely enough will to roll out of bed in the mornings.

“You have some charm, Hadrian,” Slughorn complimented, drawing Harry’s attention back to him. “I _can_ call you Hadrian, can I not? Formality gives me the worst of stomach aches.”

Reluctantly, Harry nodded his acquiescence because… sure, why not? Not like he despised the name or anything. Slughorn’s usage of it was permissible… if extremely annoying. Every time Harry heard the name, he found himself cursing his thrice-damned – and in the ground, by this point – uncle for foisting it on him. It was far too pompous, that of some famous Roman emperor, and happened to fall right in line with the traditional naming scheme of those miserable bastards the _Malfoys_.

Not noticing Harry’s distaste, Slughorn marched on.

“Smooth, not bad looking – quite the uncommon eyes you have there, my lad, and that accent’s just _charming_. And, from what I hear, skilled in not just my own passion of potions… but a _prodigy_ in magical defence. The mastery’s basically a done deal, is it not?” the Potions Master asked warmly, a flash of greed flitting through his honey-brown eyes. “After all you have done for fellow wizards in need… Felled the likes of Gateman Colina and Ewald Bahr single-handedly, I hear – that terrible woman, too, the Firebird… _Dachner_ \--”

Harry’s hand clamped down around his drink, glass groaning and cracking and splintering like fragile spring ice on a frozen-over pond. Fine shards dug into his palm, sharp splinters, blood welling between his skin and the tumbler, smearing across its unstable surface--

The glass imploded.

“Goodness!” Slughorn exclaimed, eyes panicked. “I’ve never had one do that before! My goodness…”

Harry looked down at his bloody hand, grimacing.

“Not to worry,” he told the other man with a wry twist of his lips, a semi-ironic shadow crossing his face, “I have a very firm grip.”

“Ah… Yes – yes, of course,” the man allowed uneasily, glancing between Harry’s dripping hand and his own tumbler suspiciously, as if expecting it to go the same way any moment. Leaning forward, he pointed out, “Mixed company and all, though… I’ll have the help fetch some napkins.”

Disconcertedly watching Harry calmly work slivers of cut crystal out his wandhand, Slughorn had downed two more measures of uisge by the time assistance arrived. The same muggle who showed Harry in now brought a stack of cream silk napkins and a roll of bandages, blanching at the mess trailing down the upholstery; Harry accepted them with a thin smile.

“Now, what was I saying?” Slughorn prattled to himself nervously, averting his eyes from the sight of Harry mopping up the blood. “Ah, yes – Dachner… They say it was quite the spectacle! Not even _Albus…_ Well, you know how things were in the end, of course, but stories of _your own_ heroism have reached my ears. ‘A fine young man’ dear Batty calls you – and _she_ would know…”

Down in the mud, some years ago, swathed in the chaos and visceral insanity of war, Harry found a sense of pride that refused to let others take the rights to his accomplishments (or failings, in most cases). All you had out there was your name, your skin – if you were lucky – and yesterday’s deeds. Your wins and draws and losses were _yours_ ; your mistakes were you own and nobody could take those from you, even if they shredded your mind until you were a gibbering wreck and carved your heart from your chest.

Were he fated to die, he had thought, at least he could go proudly with his peers, knowing – try as he might – he was one of the good guys. He could go out in a blaze of fire, blasting as many bad guys into Death as possible.

Or, you know, he could sit on his arse in a dank hole while Jameson molotoved Grindelwald into next Tuesday and Dumbledore ramped himself up for the good stuff. Either or, either or…

Rising to Slughorn’s expectation, he called this pride back now. Harry might have been shy at heart – early childhood saw to _that_ – but he’d learned there was a gross difference between embarrassed modesty and pigheaded denial. Sometimes your intention to be modest left you looking like an idiotic chump. Besides, the man had already seen him placidly plucking glass out his own hand, uncaring for the pain – no point degrading himself for the sake of humility now.

In light of this, he nodded to Slughorn in affirmation that _yes_ , he took down Gateman Colina and two more of Grindelwald’s most-feared all on his own merit. Not like anybody else who went up against them was still around to brag about their part in proceedings, small as it was – sooner turn tail and run than go near Colina’s undead hordes or face the Firebird’s wrath. People were fainthearted at their core; self-preservation was by far the worst sort of euphemism for cowardice.

Harry didn’t just knock half of Grindelwald’s star line-up out the game, he took down scores of those lieutenant’s subordinates, too. Hell deny him entry, the best way to make the Dead properly _stay_ dead was to obliterate them from flesh to soul; his ‘victory’ made him little better than a dementor. He rarely relished in such acts but sometimes brutality was a necessary evil. There were days every man couldn’t see through the haze of red. His actions likely saved countless lives down the line – and if they _hadn’t_ , then… well, at least they served as bloody revenge for those already lost.

Harry had killed and, thanks to the Good Lord’s hospitality, he’d served his time for it…

Only belatedly noting Slughorn’s prolonged silence, Harry looked back over what the man had said. He frowned – what _did_ he say? More unimportant drivel, no doubt; Slughorn, like so many low-level politicians, was more like a gossiping housewitch than a serious conversationalist.

With as much detachment and fluidity as he could hack together, Harry ventured, “I’m sure Mister Dumbledore did all he could,” breaking the void Slughorn had left.

Pondering what other words might be considered suitable, Harry’s unbandaged hand found the rim of his fresh glass; he caressed it languorously, leaving dark patterns in the condensation clinging to the crystal. For a gentleman’s club, the Oriental Rooms was surprisingly frigid, as if the fire on the other side of the room were just a painting – handsome but impotent.

“I’ve heard Hogwarts has the best transfiguration course in Europe,” Harry finally said, his disinterest on the topic not entirely feigned, “and the highest HOWL results. COBRAs, too, come to think of it. Only fourth to my own alma mater in the globe.

“I imagine Mister Dumbledore to be a very busy man. Providing such _exemplary_ education to his students must be hard work. The war was mainly contained to the continent, beyond his reach… Politics can’t do everything.”

In some ways, Harry really did mean this kindly, as a defence – or way out, excuse – for his one-time headmaster. Still, in more ways – after the things he endured these past few years – he meant it more condemningly: Dumbledore’s defeat of Grindelwald was all well and good, yes, but only occurred after the man was nearly bested by Jameson at the Battle of Godric’s Hill. The previous Head of House Potter duelled the cruel wizard to a standstill for hours before taking a killing blow.

Dumbledore. The great hero who subdued and captured an already-injured warlord, confining the man in that awful prison he built to hold his own enemies--

The banshee’s there always screamed because someone was always about to die.

– some victory.

Harry was vindicated when he learned the war was over – had been for several weeks by the time word filtered down to his prison-damned ears – but had never thought it meant he could sleep easy. There remained many followers and supporters of Grindelwald’s campaign to take care of, many of whom were extremely outspoken; people needed to be dragged in for questioning – charged, tried and annihilated; the flotsam of countless families was strewn like so much ash across the continent, desperately seeking those who could sew the survivors back together.

To the average Islender, the sheer enormity of the mess left by the sudden and unexpected downfall of the Good Lord was an abstract thing, something for others to worry about.

Back on the Mainland, attempts to rebuild a functioning society were sluggish at best. Home, livelihood, officials and entire _generations_ had been lost to hellfire; it was chaos, a shambles – and Harry couldn’t help one bit. He wasn’t cleared for duty by his healer. For this reason, Harry had been stuck in one of his family’s manors, directionless, whiling the days away on a steady diet of mood-controlling potions, hopeless arithmancy projects and topical sunshine.

He missed Siggy and Boris, Sera and Professor Bahr. Hell, some days he’d even take a nice chat with Colina if it just meant _something_ was happening – a good struggle for his soul might break the monotony quite nicely. Though technically, he supposed, he already _was_ undertaking a long, drawn-out battle for his soul – a quiet one that nobody could see… one he was incontrovertibly losing…

Yeah, on second thoughts, if Colina ever showed up to visit, Harry would have the elves provide some biscotti and booze-laced tea, then blow that bastard to kingdom-come all over again. Tea first, though… His mother would never forgive him if he were rude enough to kill a guest _before_ going through the niceties…

“ _Cuh-hum…”_

Somebody cleared their throat, sounding put out. Well, bully for them.

Then, senses backtracking, for a horrible moment Harry feared his mother had turned up to scold him for his not-very-hospitable thoughts – or his _very_ hospital thoughts, depending on your perspective and level of regard for puns… He shivered, deciding if he ever needed to kill someone _inside_ the Château, he’d make sure not to do it on any of his mother’s antique rugs… or let her find out about it. _Ever_.

“Ah yes, I _had_ heard…”

Harry frowned and shook his head slightly, trying to dislodge the fog that had formed somewhere behind his eyes. Slughorn’s words seemed so non-sequitur. Were the two of them talking? Urgh, perhaps he ought to have taken a Wit-Sharpening Potion instead of that useless, too-temporary Calming Draught.

In truth, Harry let himself fall into his own head far too often. His thoughts spiralled in on themselves like a runaway Gringotts cart, careening on precariously with no particular destination, until the original subject was lost and he was plummeting at terminal velocity down a rabbit hole of his own making. He was clearly out of practice with regards to the art of conversation – or even paying attention. Solitary confinement had a tendency to do that to a man, given enough time.

Sirius once mentioned the problem in a letter, saying how every word he wrote felt contrived – wrong somehow, as if he were something other than human. The art of conversing had become a foreign, unnatural thing to his godfather… Harry now understood what the man meant.

Peering at Slughorn’s expression out the corner of his eye, trying to gauge where their conversation was, he decided the Slytherin was contrite; saddened and silent, his posture tense, Harry guessed the man was deliberating what diluent garbage to toss out into the water next. The genuine pause gave Harry the welcome chance to gather whatever of his faculties hadn’t already trickle-poured down into the bone-strewn sewers of gibbering, garbling lunacy, pushing all thoughts of war and his currently-shitty life further back into the putrid recesses of his mind, where they couldn’t so easily interfere with the present. Didn’t matter how delicately one poked a raw wound, it was still going to hurt the patient somewhat.

Slughorn shifted.

“His Grace was a good man,” the man eventually said, voice grave. “I attended school with Jameson Potter myself, you know – although he was several years behind me and favoured Ravenclaw. Beyond outstanding with defence, much like yourself, and exceedingly inventive in transfiguration. He was popular – and cunning enough to have been one of my own housemates.”

Harry tried not to scoff as Slughorn reeled off his uncle’s more attractive traits like reading from an auto-cue.

“You seem to take after him in many ways,” Slughorn declared. “Your father _must_ be devastated – they were close?”

“Not really,” he answered blandly. “They didn’t always see eye to eye.”

“Every family has their little disagreements,” the Slytherin gregariously reässured.

 _Quite_ , Harry thought sourly.

Like disagreements over Harry’s validity as a Potter… Or over Uncle Jameson’s _less_ admirable traits, such as alcoholism, gambling and adultery.

Sometimes, Harry thought it fortunate for Aunt Marcia’s dicky heart that she never learned of her husband’s dalliances – repeated, well-paid dalliances – from anyone. Now the blasted man was dead, things like that wouldn’t be spoken about by all but the most gauche; holding the gone accountable for their lesser misdemeanours was considered great insult to their living family.

His uncle was pleasant enough when only mildly drunk – very intelligent and witty, brimming with banter and good cheer. The rest of the time the man was antisocial, a demanding head of house and pickled as a newt for the most part. That Jameson never disowned Harry’s father for accepting a time-traveller into the family – treating him as kin… which, to be fair, he _was_ – was nothing short of a miracle.

Now, by some stroke of happenstance, Charlus Potter was lord of their house and Harry suddenly found himself the unwilling heir. That Charlus and Dorea’s branch of the family even retained their inheritance was proof enough that Harry had done nothing, in Jameson’s admittedly rather skewed opinion, to truly jeopardise their family’s reputation. Apparently, mixing with a Mockridge was not okay but the wholesale dissimulation of an army’s souls was just fine.

Still…

“He was,” Harry decided, speaking softly, “if not in as many words.”

That sober response worked spectacularly as a conversation killer; a heavy silence fell between them, swaddling Harry in its embrace. The divide between a man like him and a man like Slughorn was wide, neither of them quite able to relate to the other, each and every word exchanged needing to be carefully picked so as not to cause offence. In lieu of talking – the Slytherin was probably wondering how he could possibly return the conversation to more pleasant topics – Harry stared vacantly into the honey-liquid filling his glass, swirling it so a vortex formed in the centre, liquid pressed to the cup’s inner-circumference.

This meeting was turning out to be more than a simple, brief step out of his comfort zone; no, it was so incredibly awkward he was starting to seriously consider something might be spectacularly wrong with him. Was he still actually capable of functioning acceptably in normal society?

Harry never had enjoyed the politics of making acquaintanceships, finding them dichotomous in their nature: Both sharp and dull, deeply contrived and shallow, compliments hidden as barbs and insults offered with saccharine smiles, kindness oft promising more benefit to the one offering it than the one who needed it. However, he’d long come to accept that in the best, the friendliest and simplest of relations, flattery or praise was indeed necessary, just as bells were necessary to keep the Dead down.

He worked out ten seconds into the conversation that Slughorn was a bit of a name-dropping braggart – no time at all. Unlike Lockhart, though, at least Slughorn actually had ability at _something_. Harry knew the Potions Master’s sort, having met more than his fair share of people like that at not only Koschey but also at Natasha’s court. It was probably a credit in the Slytherin’s books that he was _genuinely_  more refined in his manner than any of those individuals had been. More than merely bragging over his own accomplishments, Slughorn seemed to be in the odd habit of bragging on behalf of others and saying little of his own skills. Slughorn seemed the long-game sort – a behind the scenes giant who managed not to lurk invisibly but remain so generally unthreatening that he was ignored by big players entirely.

Harry supposed this was a somewhat pleasant change from the norm. If Colina had spent a bit less time autofellating then perhaps he’d still be alive… well, aliv _ish_.

Through the folds of silence, Harry observed the strangers in the room. He could see several through the undulating curtains of cigar smoke hanging thick in the air like fog on an autumn morning, the sort of fog that seemed a hairsbreadth from solidity. Speaking quietly, amiably with one another and all looking reasonably content, the men seemed a million miles away… Harry was aware he’d likely _never_ have fit in with the sort that patronised a hoity-toity club like this; all the same, though… he wasn’t sure he should feel quite as _cut_ _off_ from other people as he did. His experiences changed him too much for him to be around normal people, it seemed.

Siggy was right… There was something inside him, these days, which had snapped… and some breakages couldn’t ever be taken back. If was sort of like the time an angry Dudley tore the ribbon in one of his cassette tapes. When the boy tried to make the tape play again, the stereo ended up letting out gentle click-a-clicks, the device’s wheels turning to produce heavily distorted music… Then, when the machine reached the break in the tape’s ribbon, it immediately began emitting a high-pitched, squealing yowl comparable to a cat through a mangler. The tape promptly chewed itself to death.

Slughorn cleared his throat again – man seemed to be making a habit of that.

Despondently, Harry redirected his attention to the Potions Master.

“You wonder why I asked you here today, Hadrian,” the man stated without preämble.

 _For a whole month, when I could bring myself to give a shit_ , Harry thought to himself, only saying aloud, “It’s crossed my mind. I’m not sure what interest a great potioneer could possibly have in me.”

Truth and a splash of flattery to help bind the array. It was surprising how many men told you what you wanted to know once you fluffed their egos – almost as lucrative an interrogation method as threatening to let wild dogs chow down on their shrivelled chodes.

When Harry heard Slughorn wanted to see him – from the new great Lord Potter, that ever-absent tosspot – his father advised the Slytherin had a penchant for collecting those he felt had promising futures, based on their looks, skills or connexions. Harry himself certainly fitted well into these categories – or he used to – considering he was about to become the happy recipient of a combined masters in magical defence and battlemagics. Hig age and academic accomplishments likely draw Slughorn’s eye on their own, even without the rumours bandied about surrounding Harry’s status as a prospective recipient of an Order of Merlin (that was before the Islen Ministry encountered way too much red-tape to bother inconveniencing themselves trying to actually award him one).

As much as he might rail against it if he could find the energy, Harry had inadvertently become famous again. The grateful anonymity he first slipped into upon arriving in the forties – thirties, technically – had long been demolished by his participation in the war. At least he was now well-known for trying to do what he thought was right, rather than for a lucky escape he didn’t even remember. It seemed life would never be quiet, no matter the time period – the masses would always need someone to adore and vilify.

Seeming to have become accustomed to Harry’s inattention by now, Slughorn didn’t clear his throat before randomly assuring, “Jameson spoke very highly of you and your actions. I have been privy to the recipe for the potion – the one that saved him. _Oh yes_ ,” the man added benevolently, probably catching the look of disbelieving, discomforted shock in Harry’s eyes. “Indeed, I know of what you did for him. He was a good man, but he _did_ like to overindulge. If you hadn’t created the Rejuvenation Draught, I do not doubt he wouldn’t have seen the end of the decade. Irrelevant, I suppose, given the circumstances…”

Great, the man was contrite again. Slughorn pinkened and Harry fought the urge to roll his eyes, settling for an unblinking gaze that had the other man squirming in his seat, though it wasn’t intended to be threatening in any manner.

“Even so…” the Potions Master picked up his sentence after swallowing thickly, “If it hadn’t been for the Dark Lord, your uncle would have lived to see many years to come – all thanks to _you_ , Hadrian! Quite astonishing, given his proclivities.”

Guess Slughorn never got the memo about not speaking poorly of the dead…

“He was very proud of your espionage work, too. You saved many lives at the risk of your own – his commendation of that was substantial. He told me you were headed for Great things, Hadrian, with a capital ‘G’…

“And, if I’m entirely honest, I have found myself pondering, of late, what career opportunities a talented young wizard such as yourself has been presented,” the man worded carefully, sounding like he wanted to come across as not-too-invested in the answer. “The French Ministry, perhaps – you _do_ currently reside in France, do you not? Or the Islen Aurors, maybe? I _have_ heard whispers…”

Harry – a little sore on this subject – tossed his head back and barked out a sharp laugh that reminded him of the type of humour Sirius showed the night he and Hermione helped the convict escape on Buckbeak.

“I doubt either would have me, sir,” he told the Slytherin transparently.

Slughorn seemed not to understand his statement but didn’t let it hold him back. “I see,” the man said quietly, thoughtfully.

Then, new confidence spreading across his pudgy face, the man began: “I have been teaching at Hogwarts for nearly thirty-five years, now – since long before you were born. Why, Albus and I--” _unimpressive namedrop_ “--signed on the very same year! I feel it’s more than high time for a change of pace.”

Blindsided by the seemingly sudden lurch into a barely-tangential topic, Harry leaned forwards a little further and clutched his dwindling drink more tightly. Slughorn, brushing one hand through carefully trimmed, pale brown hair, gently took lead in their discussion. Probably for the best.

“My hopes for a nice and early, semi-retirement won’t be fulfilled anytime soon, I’m resigned to say. I would like to spend more of my time on research projects and ingredient cultivation, rather than standing in a draughty classroom trying to teach little sno-- uh, _dear children_ – promising children, I mean to say--” here, he chortled in the flustered sort of way people do when they’ve been caught saying what they _really_ mean “--the art of potioneering.”

The man sighed heavily, the sound false to Harry’s ears. An affected sigh, then.

“Regretfully, my lad, I’ve only been privileged to teach a handful this last decade who I could consider promising enough to take up my position – and all of them have chosen other, _less inspiring_ careers, to my dismay.” Slughorn was slightly flushed in the face but poured himself another uisge regardless. “Teaching a whole generation of witches and wizards is a prestigious thing, a position of great responsibility. I could not, in good faith, leave my students to be cursed with a fool.”

_Try Snape._

“Therefore, I have a proposition for you, Hadrian,” the Slytherin announced, placing his glass on a side table and leaning forwards. “A favour to an old family friend, if you will.”

Automatically mirroring the other man’s posture, Harry felt his more calculating traits bubble to the surface of the grey river that persistently swept his psyche through. He could instinctively feel this topic of conversation was some sort of prelude to negotiations. Good – negotiation was something he was _good_ at, no matter how dysthymic he might be at any given point in time.

“What _sort_ of favour?” he asked Slughorn, his voice low and vaguely amused in the way it always became when he felt powerful.

The Potions Master’s posture told Harry that he held something the other man wanted. Hopefully, whatever Slughorn asked for was something Harry wouldn’t mind giving.

“I would be very much gratified if you would consider consenting to becoming my apprentice,” the older man declared, lips stretching carefully around the words like he’d practised them repeatedly before coming. “I realise, of course,” Slughorn went on, “you already have a mastery in the moleskin – I am hopeful, however, you are ambitious enough to contemplate what an opportunity it is to pursue a second.”

What an interesting thought.

Harry tapped a foot, the idea spinning in the current of his mind.

He hadn’t yet officially chosen a career, his recovery from his time at the Good Lord’s pleasure uncertain, his prospects dulled by his own acts of what could only dubiously be dubbed heroism. He _had_ received numerous suggestions – even some outright job offers – in addition to plenty of requests by private parties to help round-up stray Visionäire and locate missing magicals.

To be honest, Harry was only barely coming to terms with the idea he had survived the war more-or-less – less, definitely less – physically intact and truly accepted he was likely incapable of ever returning to his own time. Though he was rather well settled into life in the forties – initial culture shock and later strife be damned – there was always this vague notion that somewhere down the line he’d go home… but that was _never_ going to happen.

The blow accompanying that realisation, when it occurred, wasn’t as great as it once may have been… Harry was already struggling enough trying to keep himself grounded in _this_ time period – he didn’t need the added mental-splitting of trying to reach out for another. Fact was fact – time would plod on at a natural rate and it would be many years before he saw the nineties again. He had to live and die in the world given, never returning to the one he was born to.

Point being, due to his constant and unabatable Melancholy – something that curled right through his system like weeds, like the barbed-wire roots of some twisted, dark tree – Harry hadn’t been thinking much on the future lately. He was hard pushed to image what tomorrow would be like or to face it when it came, let alone to actively try and build a life for himself that could last years to come.

Thinking about it properly, Harry was aware that, despite the offers and suggestions he had received over the last few months with regards to his future career, it was extremely unlikely the Islen Auror Force – or the French, Genoan or Neapolitan aurors, for that matter, or even the Eastern European huntsmen – would ever entertain the idea of taking him on in an active capacity, regardless of the relevant mastery he achieved. Despite being his favoured area of work, the truth was that any job Harry could procure in law enforcement would probably result in a long, dull career filled with parchment-pushing and little-to-no field action; even if Healer Ilyich didn’t tell those establishments about his soul-sickness, the damage wreaked on his leg was severe and had been largely irreversible.

Plus, after _Paris_ , the French Ministry wouldn’t want him for any kind of position – not even a desk job. He supposed they were still peeved with him. There was no chance they would be hiring _him_ as an emissary any time soon, even if such positions _were_ hereditary; nepotism could only get you so far in life and Harry was basically blacklisted in France. He probably deserved it, too.

If he were unable to find a position related to law enforcement or follow his father into diplomacy – not that he held any interest in the latter – then why not do _this_ , take this possible path Slughorn was basically waving in front of him on a silver platter? It was practically a feast compared with some of his other alternatives.

Other options were… _what_? Sitting in on his mother’s luncheons like some sad little mummy’s boy? Pursuing a life as a gentleman of leisure, filling his days with liquor and schach and fine cigars? Or, perhaps, to go crawling back to Natasha, kept like a favoured dog, embroiled in court politics – terminal inanities – and doomed to spend all his days at her juvenile and capricious whim? Or, worst of all, he could start taking the post-war bounties that had been chucked out by many a rich, angry wizard with more money than moral; he could lose himself in the unsanctioned task of hunting, drawing and quartering the dregs of the enemy, then petty criminals whose operations benefited from the war, then those whose inaction allowed it all to happen, and then… well, where did the buck stop?

Where any of those even _viable options_ at all? How long would it take him to cast aside his mind in any of those scenarios, toss it down into an abyss to chase most of what was once his soul?

Or, there was _this_. This unexpected – if timely – offer that could potentially save him from spending his remaining days trapped in total boredom. This offer to return to Hogwarts, a balloon welling in his chest, making his heart excitedly jump and jig in ways it hadn’t for years… On the downside, taking the job would involve him having to bring himself to take a genuine interest in potion brewing as opposed to viewing it as an unwanted obligation.

The majority of job offers he’d already received were from various departments in the Islen Ministry, which, more than just being the domain of parchment-pushing positions of mind-numbing tediousness, was an establishment fraught with corruption. Most other offers were from companies with varied interests and, in some cases, questionable ethics. None of the offers, bar one, had been in his favoured specialisation, and the one that _was…_ Well, taking that job would put Beauxbatons in direct opposition with the French Ministry – not something he wanted on his conscience, seeing as relations between the two institutions had historically been very good, all things considered.

There was always the Mews, he supposed, but he really wasn’t cut out for that sort of work. The eternally-ongoing portkey project proved that much.

Still, this stirring of warmth in his chest when he thought of Hogwarts… The warmth was something special, something disturbingly foreign to him of late, something he suspected might be real, bonafide _hope_ …or just genteel, cautious happiness.

Decisions, decisions…

Heaving a sigh, eventually he decided his continued silence was probably too rude to not end it. If he _were_ to go work at Hogwarts, it would be best not to overly offend his prospective employer from the off.

So, visibly intrigued, he prompted Slughorn, “Go on…”

“Well,” the patiently lounging man elaborated, “if you accepted my offer, you would come reside at my school--”

Yeah, so much so obvious.

“--and assist me in some lessons whilst studying, help me conduct research. In your second year, depending on progress, you might take over the teaching of some pre-OWL classes on some days, giving my old bones a bit of a break. You would receive your own rooms, naturally – though, in the interest of full disclosure, it’s possible they will be in the dungeons, which are a tad nippy.”

A pause.

Harry pretended to think further on the proposition. In truth, he already knew full well he wanted to accept.

At just sixty-odd years of age, Slughorn was hardly decrepit as far as wizarding standards went; he was as fit as a muggle at least twenty years his junior. In fact, the man was hardly barrelling past the edge of his prime into the long, dreaded haunts of middle age that set in at the approach of a century. The Potions Master was renowned as one of the top-five in the world.

Though Harry never expected to be capable with potions of any viscosity, colour or repulsive flavour – not after Snape did his best to squash any interest non-boot-licking, non-Slytherin students might have in the subject – he could certainly see himself faring well enough under Slughorn’s tutelage.

If it were possible to put aside his, admittedly unrealistic, need to find a position allowing him to legally chase down every remaining Visionäire bastard on the planet and see how _they_ liked Nurmengard’s room-service, a second apprenticeship could work well for him. The first sure was a roaring success.

In his current state, even the _Guard_ didn’t want him on active duty, which left him adrift these past months. It wasn’t like his days had been teeming with social engagements, either, despite his mother prodding him to get out the house more – like he could do that without breaking his little agreement with the French Ministry. Not that he _want_ _ed_ social engagements – people were… not nice, not worth the effort in general. By Veles, he ought to have let them all sail off to hell in the rickety ship of bones they had built for themselves, not putting his own soul on the line to save them. Stupid him. Not worth it.

   River water pounded in his ears and his toes froze over, phantom current tugging at his calves.

             Shit.

    Here and now, Potter, here and now.

 _This_ could be the chance Harry was waiting for, the thing finally giving him the _will_ to hold on.

If nothing else, how wonderful it would be to return from the harsh realities of duty and life in the greater world, to come back to the first real home he ever had. Unlike many things he had the misfortune to be acquainted with in the future, he missed Hogwarts as a caged selkie missed the open sea – he could live without her but it was infinitely heartbreaking. No matter the overwhelming grandeur and fascinating company at Natasha’s court, the camaraderie at L’Académie de Koschey, or the warmth of a real family, he never fully managed to crush his yearning for the shifting, endless halls of Hogwarts.

The frost ebbed and reformed indecisively. Somewhere within earshot, there was a plop and splash that gave him the mental impression of expanding ripples.

Seeming to eager to take up Slughorn's offer, though… It would make him look desperate, putting him in a bad position for negotiation. Considering his recent exploits and the resultant accolades, desperation didn’t make much sense. It was unacceptable.

Far as most were concerned – as in, the majority who didn’t know the particulars of some of the more… _grisly_ parts of the war – Hadrian Potter was a man in high demand. He wasn’t particularly keen on the attention, probably wouldn’t ever be, but he wasn’t about to show Slughorn an ounce of desperation. Better Slughorn think him reluctant to take the position and have the man ingratiated to him, than for the Slytherin to think he did Harry a favour and believe the reverse.

The hot, sunshine spark, which had settled somewhere in his chest, grew a smidge and meltwater pooled around his shoes – it remained liquid. Good job Slughorn wasn’t looking down. Without quite understanding why or what was going on, Harry’s soul hugged Life a little harder, edging away from the chilly waters waiting just beyond the invisible precipice he permanently had his heels to.

“You realise I’ll have to consider this?” he asked the Potions Master, once an age had passed, causing the man to bow his head. “I’ve had other offers, see. I’d like to make a well-informed choice.”

The Slytherin wore a sly smile that, far from putting Harry at ill-ease, convinced him the other was smarter than he looked and, even more treacherously, might even be a _perceptive_ man. If Slughorn sensed something in Harry’s posture that wasn’t supposed to be given away… Impressive. It was a shrewd person who could see past _Harry’s_ walls.

“Of course, my lad,” Slughorn returned confidently, acting like he already had Harry’s Unbreakable Vow or a contract signed in blood. “I _do_ hope you will come to the realisation a mastery under me really is the best thing for you. If not, I have significant contacts... I could always extend lines into the Ministry – I know a charming young lady in the Department of Magical Games and Sportsmanship who’s been complaining they are woefully understaffed… That is, if politics is more your forte?”

Ha, like he needed Slughorn’s ‘contacts’! As if Harry couldn’t get a job at the Islen Ministry just by walking in and hanging up his coat. He was an ex-prisoner-of-war with high qualifications, ridden into the ground in the field and still receiving _thank you_ letters from magicals across Europe even five months after getting out Grindelwald’s troublesome-enemy aquarium. _And_ he was of the Thirteen…

Basically, those document-signing sluts at the Islen Ministry would spread their legs for him before he even bothered opening his mouth to say ‘hi’.

Shame he despised the lot of them.

“I think I’ve had enough of politics, thank you very much,” Harry batted back wryly, his tone clipped in such a way that, for a horrible moment, he sounded not unlike Petunia. “Really, what’s war but a physical game of politics?”

Slughorn’s smile was tight as he agreed, _“What indeed?”_

 

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

_posted: 2017-03-10_  
_edits: borgin letter_

  

**It was a logical fallacy that those of a greater age were also considered to have greater knowledge.** Tom had encountered more aged fools than he cared to count and, too, enough bright thinkers among his peers to know there was no strong correlation between age and ability. Yet, the many would believe what they believed, not to be dissuaded by sensible argument. It was to his benefit that a good dose of charm was, unlike fact, rather good for persuading people their generalised opinions needed some deep review (and where charm failed, force _always_ served).

He was certain Headmaster Dippet would have hired him in a heartbeat, were it not for Dumbledore’s largely baseless dislike of Tom, and insistent propagation of such to others. It was with great regret Tom departed Hogwarts for the last time, not foreseeing a long-term return to its walls in the near future.

A teaching position would be the perfect thing for him. He would be glad to remain in the castle’s embrace, where he would be free to continue his studies surrounded by like-minded academics who surely had all sorts of obscure knowledge squirrelled away. There he could ensure students would finally receive an exemplary, non-biased education in defensive and offensive magics (Merrythought’s course was woefully subpar). Most importantly, from a professorial seat he could counteract, in the student population, some of Dumbledore’s more blatant favouritism towards those of a Light persuasion.

There were very _many_ reasons he wished to stay at Hogwarts – so many that listing them all presented a tedious challenge.

It was not to be so, regretfully.

Headmaster Dippet cited Tom’s youth and ‘inexperience of the world’ as reason for turning him down for the open position of Defence and the Academic Dark Arts position. Tom knew full well this absurd suggestion came to fruition on Dumbledore’s nudging; previously, Dippet – doddery old fool though he was – sounded rather enthused at the prospect of keeping his most brilliant student within the castle walls.

Very well. This was how things were.

If Dippet wanted him to acquire more experience, he would. He would take every exam, every avenue available if it meant getting back to Hogwarts, his one true and rightful home. The DADA position would surely become vacant again in years to come… In fairness, if it did not become vacant then he could always free the position up himself – he was nothing if not adaptable.

Dumbledore, meanwhile…

The slight that man had made against him would not go unremembered. That meddler might be untouchable _now…_ One day, though, the public would begin to forget about how the Transfiguration Master defeated a Dark Lord. When they inevitably did, Tom would be ready. He was extremely patient.

Nobody insulted Tom Riddle without him seeing they were – one way or another, no matter how much time elapsed – paid back threefold.

 

                                  – _thoughts of Tom Riddle, July 1945_

 

 

 

 _ april _  
the open gate

 

 

 ** TOM WOKE TO A ** ** thin layer of frost on the inside of the windows again; **his general warming charms had dissipated some time in the night. Either this spring was simply unseasonably cold or, if he looked at it from an entirely pessimistic viewpoint, his frost-creating problem was back again, at least while he slumbered and was unable to attempt to control it fully.

An irritating rap-a-tap tapping drew him from the favoured warmth of his bed and into the living room, which he reluctantly allowed. Quickly locating the source of the disturbance, it was with a beleaguered sigh that he went back to retrieve his wand from the nightstand and used it to scrape aside the ice coating the window. Heating the catch a little, so as to prevent his fingers from sticking to its arctic surface, he opened the window and allowed the impatient owl beyond into his flat.

The bird fluttered past Tom self-importantly, coming to perch on the back of the sofa; its dark talons dug into the chair’s rich, brocade fabric, making him glower at the creature.

Tom did not go to retrieve the correspondence it carried immediately, very aware it was far too early to be reading. Judging by the clock on the mantle, it was not yet five in the morning. He had not been due up for another two hours yet and was not at all pleased to find himself awake with more than an hour until true sunrise.

He turned back to the window, watching the palest suggestions of sunrise paint the east a slightly lighter blue. Beyond the last vestiges of frost edging the panes, the violet springtime blossom characterising the wizarding neighbourhood of Orch Hill climbed away into the distance. Tom’s building, though not too pokey and suitably comfortable after the liberal application of décor-related transfigurations, was at the dodgiest end of the area, backing right onto the warrenous streets of Knockturn Alley and Sprawley Market.

In the eyes of most, his residence was not located in the most desirable area; for his purposes, it suited just fine. Until his estate was finalised, and subsequent work was done to make it habitual for a proper wizard, this was the best, least muggle property he could afford. This flat was cheap and happened to give him ample access to the Shifting Markets.

At nineteen years of age, Tom had graduated from Hogwarts almost an entire year previous, achieving nine Os at HOWL level (following the twelve Os he received on his OWLs), after a school career including prefecthood, headship, a flawless academic and behavioural record, and a special award for services to the school.

He had only been a little tempted by the many job offers he was sent in the months leading up to and following his departure from Hogwarts. Most of these positions were below him in some way or another (and none were the one he truly desired): There were offers from ghastly institutions such as _the Daily Prophet_ and _Today in Magic_ , all claiming to have followed his work on _the Hogwarts Express_ , who dearly wished to snap him up for their teams; there were contracts from the law firms and high-end businesses run by the families of his fellow Hgowarts students, all informing him ‘With a mind like yours, you’ll be a partner in just twenty-or-so years’; and then there were the begging requests from the Ministry of Magic, who were all over his academic record (the Special Award for Services to the School, plus his stint as first Prefect and then Head Boy, certainly did nothing to dissuade them).

The fact remained, however, Tom had no desire to lock himself into a long-term contract as a gudgeon for some business with more gold than purpose. Also, he entertained no thoughts of sliding into an uncomfortable desk-job at the Ministry, where surely the general atmosphere of the place would bore him into an early grave and potentially lead to him growing as corrupt as the twisted, bribable, bigoted wizards the Isles stood upon. Furthermore, the amount of pay the Ministry offered was comparable to that achieved by down-and-out muggle artists, actors and musicians… Which was to say, not much at all (and, besides, Dumbledore had managed to block him from all the vaguely interesting Ministry positions, anyway – bloody meddler).

There was some irony in the fact it had been _the Daily Prophet_ ’s offer that Tom considered most carefully. He knew the challenges involved in chasing down fact and suspected the sheer level of schadenfreude experienced when publishing exposes on the richest, most foul climbs of wizarding society would appeal for years to come… It was with heaviness he acknowledged such a position would leave him with little recourse but impartiality; the open-truth would certainly anger those laid bare by it, too… probably enough they would retaliate. Such anger, among the elite, would be detrimental to any future plans he may have requiring the coöperation of such types. People trusted reporters even less than politicians.

So, Tom politely turned them all down, citing a need to spend more time thinking about where he would like his future career to lead. He took up a lowly clerking position in a store sat at the friendlier end of Knockturn Alley. The pay was minimal – though no less than the Ministry offered him – and with his particular talents the work was easy enough. If nothing else, the lack of difficulty in the vocation gave him plenty of free time to look back over the main areas covered in the COBRAs – he was due to ace them in little over a month.

Despite the general ease of his work, it was an unfortunate truth that Borgin seemed to insist on rising before dawn; apparently, he expected Tom keep such a habit also. The owl perching on his settee only reïnforced the popular opinion that Borgin was an inhuman beast of a man, one who (if he had human needs at all) slept hanging upside-down in the storeroom of his shop – like a bat. 

_Tom,_ the note read, _I received word the Opaline Curse activated several days ago. I require that you go retreive the necklace without any delay. The woman in whose possession it is, resides in muggleside Kensington. Address: 279 High Street, Kensington._

That was it, nothing else.

The blasted man got up at the crack of dawn to send him an order to collect that stupid cursed necklace again! Somehow, completely mysteriously, the reprehensible thing kept managing to find its way into the hands of wealthy muggles. This would be the third time he had needed to track it down (the first being during his first month on the job, when he stopped it being sold at a muggle estate sale; the second, two months prior, when he was required to remove it from a Chelsea penthouse before aurors noticed the trail of suspicious deaths it caused).

Huffing, Tom quickly scribed a reply to Borgin, indicating he got the message and was off to do as requested. Then, recalling he had yet to confirm the location for a lunch engagement he had, he pulled over a second sheet of parchment and told Carina Black they would meet at her place of work (the White Admiral in Orch Mead) as was usual, though at the slightly premature time of midday. He hated to prepone so close to the time but his morning’s task required it. Returning then to the correspondence for Borgin, Tom dutifully added he would not be at the store until lunch passed – he would bring the necklace then.

He sent the owl off with a crust of toast in its beak and a smear of baneberry jam staining one of its ochre wings, informing it to never disturb him at such an hour again (not matter how much Borgin insisted) unless it were a life or death situation (and perhaps not even then). The bird alighted, flew a hundred feet, then landed in a tree and forsook its duty in favour of finishing off the toast crust.

Tom frowned at it.

Deciding it was no problem of his if Borgin’s bird was too lazy to deliver the message, he dressed for the day. His wardrobe was mainly full of the overpriced muggle suits he acquired from the Riddle’s house (it was not as if they would miss them). Although his peers favoured the finely-tailored robes one could purchase from Twilfit and Tattings (and numerous other stuck-up establishments), Tom never truly felt comfortable in them. Most robes were hemmed too long, dragging along the floor in the current fashion, and the wrists were too loose, flowing with folds of unnecessary fabric; the popular styles made basic tasks like writing and walking more difficult than clothing had any business doing.

Like it or not, he was no sheltered pureblood; he had spent a great deal of time in the muggle world. He may have suffered a dreadful youth but, before Dumbledore arrived to snatch him from the grey halls of the orphanage, his greatest ambition in life was to blend in with the hundreds of businessmen of the city, to belong with them. It was poetic that to fit into the society such men inhabited, he first had to abandon it entirely. It seemed no matter what he did, he would never quite fit in anywhere: His magical peers in Slytherin looked down on him for his non-apparent blood status, while the muggles he lived with as a child always pushed him aside on account of his oddities (though to be fair, for the most part he spurned the other children at the orphanage too, so there was no love lost there).

Still, though his excursion to find the Riddles was largely fruitless, producing a very different outcome to the one (he could only contritely admit to himself) he hoped for, the rather nice possessions he got out of the fiasco were one small consolation. There was the ash and glass table he borrowed from the mansion’s entranceway; the long, powder blue sofa now sitting in his living room; and the delicate, china crockery that found its way from their dining room to his. 

Beyond these things, there was also a rather fine wardrobe and its contents. He did not presume any would miss these things if they had not known they were meant to be there. With Morphin’s confession of the deed and the Riddles’ lack of extended family, it was unlikely anyone would really look for some misplaced, seldom-used furniture.

Everything in that house was his by right.

Dressing impeccably in one of the dark blue, brass-buttoned suits from his progenitor’s wardrobe, Tom wondered how things were going at Bird & Bird; had they yet managed to fully verify his claim on the late Riddles’ estate? 

It would have been easy enough, of course, for him to simply swoop in, erase memories, alter paperwork and be on his merry way… Tom thought it wiser, though, to go through the proper channels. There were bound to come a time when a well-visible paper trail would be of benefit to him. Seeing as he was not technically _stealing_ anything, having to deal with a few muggle solicitors was a small price to pay for his trouble.

He wrapped a luxurious red scarf about his neck, picked up his hat and briefcase, then exited the flat.

It was a little windy in Muggle London that day. The weather could not reach Tom, cocooned in warming charms as he was. It was early, the sun barely touching the streets; even so, hundreds of muggles swarmed around him the moment he stepped through the charmed archway leading from Orch Hill Park to Shaftesbury Avenue.

It was the morning rush hour – his route would lead him through some of the busiest parts of the city. Nevertheless, he took a left and beat his way through the crowds. You think there would be fewer muggles in the city, considering it was falling down all over the place – trust Grindelwald’s lot to leave a job half-done.

Kensington High Street did not precisely look like a location one of the opal necklace’s owners would reside. There were flats above the shops lining the street but, as far as he was aware, they were generally reserved for those who ran the stores below them. The street was packed with crones doing their shopping, people fighting to get onto trams and buses, and children surreptitiously swiping fruit and bread off the unmanned baskets outside various stores. It was hard to see ten feet in front of him, let alone pick a single building out the fray.

Tom wandered up and down the road three times before finally catching sight of the tiny gold numbers reading _279_. They were painted into the upper right-hand corner of a much larger front declaring _J H Kenyon, Funeral Directors_.

      Two seven nine was not a residential address at all. It was a business address…

              An _undertakers_ , to be exact.

He shuddered involuntarily, much preferring the idea of leaving the moment a corpse became present over walking straight into a building packed with them. Even though his perfect memory made it unnecessary, he rechecked the address on Borgin’s note with vain hope… It had not changed – this was definitely the place.

           Inside his mind, something crooned: 

 _Do not fear the dead – hate them for_ _the weakness that lead them to become so_ _._

With a determined nod, Tom took a deep breath, straightened his jacket, checked his watch and pushed open the door.

Within, the undertaker’s was lit by sooty gas lights, as if somehow the business had been unable to afford to wire the building for electricity at some point in the last half a century. The walls were papered in an indistinct, dark paper of greyish hue and the air smelled strongly of tuberose. An empty counter drew a straight line opposite the entrance, a velvet-curtained door skulking behind it.

Tom strode up to the counter and smartly rapped the brass bell atop it, forcing down the urge to leave immediately and tell Borgin the necklace was already gone. He waited and, when no movement became apparent after a couple of minutes passed, rapped the bell again, more forcefully this time. 

A haggard-looking muggle (appearing ancient enough to be the one in need of an undertaker, rather than running a funeral home himself), came through the curtain, one grizzled hand parting it before him. He wore what seemed to be his death-suit, with a black tie throttling him over his too-starched shirt, and had thin, white hair that reminded Tom of Ollivander.

When the man spoke, it was in a quiet, disturbing cadence that did the strange wandmaker proud. The man’s voice was so quiet that it was necessary to learn forwards slightly to catch what he said.

“ _And_ what _can I_ do _for_ you, young man?” he asked, inflecting in all the wrong places.

Straightforward – Tom needed to see a body, much as he was loathe to. He went to say as much… when he realised Borgin (damn the man!) had not been so useful as to give him so much as a forename to go by. 

Choosing improvisation over idiocy, Tom announced, “Ah, yes. I wonder if you could help me, Mister…”

“Kenyon, _my lad_.”

“Yes, Mister Kenyon. I apologise, names seem to be something of an unfortunate misplacement of mine.”

“Happens _to_ us all in _the end_ , I’m afraid. Although, _you_ are to be _applauded on_ losing them _at such_ a young age.”

Tom laughed quietly. There was no real amusement in him… mainly because he was extremely disconcerted being surrounded by so much death. It seemed almost as if it were crawling out the undertaker’s walls, frigidly cold and threatening to consume him.

“Are _you here_ to view a family mem _ber_?” the undertaker enquired.

“Oh… No, sorry sir,” he stammered, affecting a nervous laugh. “I’m here on business, thankfully.” 

Shaking off unease, he lifted his briefcase up and onto the counter to make it clear he was important; he did not wish to be viewed as some random boy who managed to get hold of a suit, then just wandered in off the street (no matter that he basically _was_ ). The catches of the briefcase came open with a sharp, official-sounding _snap_. He began rifling through the sheaf of papers stored inside.

“I am looking for a Missus… uh…” he let his voice fall into a stressed whisper, pretending to be searching for something in particular, then began gambling. “Um… she would have come in three days ago, middle-aged… something long…”

All these things were useful ambiguities, general guesses based on several parameters: Firstly, whoever who the necklace had to be rich enough to afford such a frivolous item and, so often as to be ridiculous, rich people had long, silly names; secondly, the woman in question had to be of an age where the austere piece would not seem out of place on her, so she was likely well into her third decade; lastly, based on her assumed age, she had probably been married.

It certainly seemed to do the trick well enough.

“Ah,” Kenyon said, “You mean _Madame_ Szweda-Carling, I _think_.”

“Yes!” Tom exclaimed as if he were extraordinarily grateful to the undertaker for providing the correct name, saving him another five minutes seeking the relevant documents. “That’s right, sir.”

“ _Not_ a problem _at_ all, lad.”

Tom smiled. It was his bright smile, the one he knew had the ability to cause even _Dumbledore_ to doubt his reasons for disliking Tom. Now he had a name, he could get to work; soon the Funeral Director would have entirely forgotten Tom needed to be informed the name of his ‘client’ in the first place – people had weak memories.

“Now, Missus Szweda-Carling has had out firm on retainer for some time,” Tom began in an official tone. “I have been given the regretful duty of accounting for her estate.

He pulled a couple of random pieces of paper from his case and _willed_ them to show a representation of some kind of official document (which would work well enough against a man probably half-blind, having to read upside-down from over two feet away).

“Most of it seems to be in order, you see,” he informed the muggle, “but there have been several discrepancies noted. I have been directed here to see whether one of them cannot easily be resolved.” 

Tom glanced up from his faux-documentation hopefully. The undertaker waved one fragile hand, indicating Tom should continue talking. 

“Yes well, anyway, sir… The issue I hope to close here today is involving a rather priceless opal necklace. It has been willed but – somehow in the mess – it seems to have been misplaced.”

“An _opal_ neck _lace_ , you say?”

“Yes, sir. Described as–” he made a show of looking over his generic papers again “–being wrought of silver and set with angular, nacreous-blue opals. It is one of a kind, according to my superiors. It’s mysterious vanishment has left me and my fellow executors rather confuddled.”

When the ancient man stepped around the counter to peer over Tom’s shoulders at the papers, it was all he could do to force the ink to shimmer and shift until a small sketch of the necklace in question daubed itself halfway down. 

Examining the image, the muggle nodded slowly and said, “Yes, I’ve _seen_ it. It is _in the_ back, in _fact_. Her family had _informed_ me she _was to_ be buried in it, _though…_?”

The undertaker’s voice trailed off into a question. To ensure there would be no problems with the acquisition, not requiring forbidden memory modifications, Tom huffed good-naturedly.

“Yes, well,” he stated confidently, “this particular piece of jewellery has in fact been willed to my client's favourite cousin. A younger lady, I believe, by the name of Miss Myrtle Warren,” he bluffed, picking the first name that came to mind and holding back a wince at the memories it evoked.

With a wry smile, he added, “It seems that for some reason the _deceased_ is the one with final say on how their worldly possessions are divided, _not_ the next of kin.” 

Actually, it wasn’t. The dead didn’t have proper rights… But he was sure the undertaker would appreciate Tom’s display of respect towards the dead. 

“ _Yes_ yes,” the man sighed. “It’s _a_ crying shame, I’ll say, _for_ she looks lovely _in it. But_ it is as you say, _her de_ cision in _the_ end.” 

Tom’s brow twitched with disgust, wondering how someone could say a _corpse_ looked ‘lovely’ at all – he really hoped the undertaker meant that purely platonically. The man certainly looked warped enough to engage in all sorts of nasty acts – if not spry enough; Tom would prefer to think the muggle’s peculiar comment was borne of the fact he spent more time with the dead than the living, rather than any sort of actual attraction to the dead woman’s remains.

Giving a quick, absent tap of his finger against the parchment Tom now rested atop his briefcase, the undertaker lead him through the curtain behind the counter. It was even darker in this part of the building than it had been in the receptionway, devoid of windows as it was.

The heavy sense of death, which Tom had been purposefully ignoring, now poured back in full force. Like a raging torrent, it battered against his magic. He tensed, suddenly unable to make himself move.

The old muggle disappeared through another door at the end of the hall.

It was like a Sticking Charm were applied to Tom’s shoes. No matter how deeply he breathed and how much he berated himself for being too weak to fight against the icy sensation of death the building was saturated by, it did not make the slightest bit of difference. His limbs were stone weights and the air was treacle – he held no power here. The chilling waters were running _too hard_ and _too fast_

   “Lad?”

_and he couldn’t move and inch because_

      “Lad?”

_if he did then he would be swept away and l–_

         “LAD!”

Sucking in a deep, gasping breath, Tom snapped out of it in the nick of time.

His respiration came now fast and shallow, like he had been running, and his heart hammered away in his chest like hail on the Hogwarts greenhouses in spring. If it did not slow down a little, Tom feared his body may shatter. 

A hand landed on his shoulder. Tom wrenched himself away from it, looking up into the ancient, decaying features of the undertaker. 

“Sorry, what?” he asked the man, all eloquence defeated in the face of his panic.

“I asked _if_ you were okay, _lad_ ,” the old man said in a calm, humming voice, as if Tom were a particularly free-spirited horse he did not want to startle. “You seem _to be_ a tad…”

“Uncomfortable?” Tom suggested meekly, his tone not nearly as feigned as he would claim.

“Ah, well, I didn’t _like_ to say, _but…_ ”

“I am afraid, Mister Kenyon, I have not had to, uh… _deal_ with any of our late clients directly before,” he told the old muggle, gaining some of his wherewithal back from beneath the crushing presence of death.

The first time he became so caught up in that horrid, soul-freezing feeling… he had been the one to cause it. One of his professors eventually had to be called in to calm Tom down. That was the day he swore that, no matter how old he grew, he was _never_ going to let something as horrible and terrifying as death sink its claws into him… Not so long as he had an incomparable mind and magic at his fingertips. Death was for muggles and the incompetent.

The undertaker smiled reässuringly as he began down the corridor again, driving Tom by his shoulders. “Funny that, lad – you would think you would have this sort of thing often. It isn’t uncommon for various lawyer types to turn up to inspect the bodies of their clients.”

“I’m quite new,” Tom reasoned.

The man _hmmm_ ed.

They ventured through the door at the far end of the hallway. The undertaker lead him straight to the relevant coffin; it was situated on a long, sturdy table, the lid already absent… and there, shoved awkwardly into the coffin’s silk pillowing, was the purple, bloating corpse of Mrs Szweda-Carling herself. 

Tom did his damnedest not to flee, pride and duty the only things holding his resolve. In the end, he won the battle against his base instincts, placating them by averting his eyes from the revolting thing below. He took in a shuddering, steadying breath and attempted to ignore how cold it felt in his lungs, closing them to oxygen and making him feel lightheaded.

“Well, there _you_ see,” the undertaker intoned, moving around behind Tom, “she does _look_ lovely, _does_ n’t she?”

The muggle woman was probably nearly fifty, dyed blonde curls coarse and grey at the temple, laid out in a dark blue dress that clung to all the wrong places. Her chest seemed misshapen, trapped tightly in one of the old-fashioned corsets she likely still wore in her day to day life. Her eyes were locked open unseeingly, misty-blue and beginning to yellow. Her lips were cracked and peeling beneath the rouge smeared across them and something seemed to be weeping from her body, wetting the silk below.

Tom wondered, academically, if her expression of horror was at all related to the Opaline Curse, for surely an undertaker’s job was to make the corpse _presentable_ for the funeral, not to leave it looking like a… like some sort of freak show exhibit. (Somewhere father back in his mind, he pretended he could not feel the imprint of the woman lurking in the chill of Death, as if just waiting for her corpse to reänimate so she could return to her life).

There, draped benignly across the woman’s too-pale, ashy chest, was the necklace that killed her.

At this point, Tom would usually perform some tests to detect if the rotten thing was active and, if it were not, then gather it up to take back to Borgin and Burkes. Of course, with the dratted muggle undertaker lurking behind him, that was not an option here. 

Obliviating such an ancient muggle would no doubt result in (if not the man’s outright death) his loss of mind. Normally, Tom would not particularly care about this. Unfortunately, the Ministry monitored all magic cast outside the wizarding areas of the city; they would most certainly notice use of a Memory Modification Charm in a muggle-only area. Down in the depths of his throat, Tom also knew he had no desire to be the cause of flooding the funeral home with so much more death that he would drown in it… It was far too likely the undertaker would not be able to take an Obliviation and remain alive.) 

If Tom could not verify the necklace’s dormancy in the normal way, how should he proceed?

Her certainly did not intend on touching the thing without having first ascertained it would not do to him precisely what it did to all its previous owners. At the estate sale, this was not a problem because the sellers wore gloves and the rest of the time it was kept in a glass case for display purposes. Nor had it been a problem when he went through the apartment of that rich muggle’s mistress: The whole place was empty and a little Detection Charm in a muggle area was not cause for concern at the Ministry. 

The necklace _had_ fallen dormant following the deaths of both its previous owners… All the same, it would be unwise to chance it not being so now.

It was the undertaker himself who solved Tom’s conundrum.

The man tottered around Tom, withered fingers clutching a pristine pair of leather gloves. The man slipped them on and approached the body.

Lifting the corpse’s head gingerly, the muggle murmured, “Now, I’m sure _there is_ a catch back here somewhere.” The man fumbled for it, adding, “ _You_ know she _was_ wearing it when she came in… Poor dear _must_ have been dressing up _for_ something when she went – _I suppose_ nobody will ever _know_ why, now.”

Tom paid these words little heed, finding them unimportant. Death was lapping around his ankles again, current strong and grabbing; he stood his ground. The job was almost done.

“Ah, yes, there it _is_!” the man crowed, setting the corpse’s head back down. 

“Have you some _where_ for it to go? Seems _a_ shame to _just_ stuff it in your pocket.”

“Oh, ah…” Tom hurried, patting over his pockets and quickly extracting the same crushed-velvet pouch he transported the necklace in the previous times he collected it. “Yes, here we go,” he said, holding the pouch out, opening it up wide enough to ensure the cursed necklace would not make contact with his skin.

The undertaker carefully draped the opals inside, bottom jewel first, and that was that. 

      Task complete. 

Five minutes after hurriedly exiting the funeral home, Tom was leaned up against the wall of the alley separating it from the shop next door. His head pressed roughly back against the bricks, which caught raggedly on his carefully slicked hair. His eyes were screwed shut and the world span. Though his feet were clearly steadfast on the path, he could still sense the death laying close by; only the swarm of muggles pounding down the street a few feet away, along with the sound of vehicles over that ruckus, grounding him.

 With a tremulous breath, he opened his eyes and glanced down. As suspected, there was ice on his shoes. 

This was _not_ supposed to happen anymore!

Tom cursed, kicked the wall in fury and apparated all in quick succession. He landed on his front step and stormed inside the flat.

If the Ministry picked up his unauthorised apparation from Muggle London and decided to kick up a fuss, he was sure he could talk his way out of it. If was not as if he did so in plain view of the muggles, or anything as foolish as that. At worse, for a first offence he would receive a small fine (and note, he supposed, on whatever dossier he heard the Ministry kept on each of its citizens – controlling fools). 

The smart blue suit felt like old skin on top of his, cold and crawling, still saturated with the scent of tuberose. Tom was down to his underthings before even making it into the bathroom. 

Like in all traditional wizarding dwelling, the bathroom in his flat had a shower but no actual tub. There was an uncommonly wide, shallow sink made of blue porcelain, a tall mirror, a hot-press and a loo. The tiles were a glaring green, coating the walls from floor to ceiling, which made using the facilities in the night a lot like relieving oneself in a pitch-dark, abandoned tube station – at least the room didn’t have cause to rumble and shake. He would change the garish décor were if not for the fact the runes maintaining it would be ruined by any such attempts; he did not have the patience to reset them one by one just for the simple pleasure of a more sedate tiling colour.

Tom was forced to bathe under a trickle of tepid water for several minutes, before an angry prod of his wand finally convinced the (admittedly poorly designed) rune-cluster above him to behave… somewhat, anyway. The water jumped from trickle to torrent and heated twenty degrees in the space of a second, leaving a grumpy, pink-skinned Tom below.

It would need more than one jar of cleanser to wash the feel of death things off his skin. Even longer to regain his normal composure…

Did Julius not insist that, with an anchor to bear him, no matter how sensitive Tom was to Death and no matter how hard it grasped at him, there was no chance he could be pulled into it? The very reason for his soul-anchors was to ground him in the proper plane, to prevent his spirit wandering away the way it tried to when Myrtle died in that bathroom. What was the good of them if they could not achieve this one minor thing? 

When Tom encountered some of Grindelwald’s more disposable lackeys (clearly present to try and inspire fear in the population of Magical London) a few scant months after the creation of his first anchor, he had experienced no pull to the Other Side. Those Visionäire killed several aurors and a handful of passersby right in front of Tom… He felt nothing of it. At that time, his single anchor seemed a success.

It was whilst summering-over at Wool’s, caught amidst the dangers of the capital, Tom discovered that, while helpful, his soul-anchor was by no means foolproof. He could persevere through a small number of deaths, barely noticing the twines of ice creeping around his spine; however, when a packing factory across the road from the orphanage was hit by a well-aimed bomb, killing many of those inside, Tom was lost. Trapped in the orphanage’s basement, amongst broken furniture and cleaning supplies, Death swamped him.

Half his body coated in frost, his eyes whited out… The incident terrified the muggles at the orphanage so much that foul bitch Mrs Cole kicked him out her building on the spot. Tom collected up the few belongings in his room and left before the all-clear was even given, grateful that night they had not found time to go down to the underground station – by Morgana, _that_ would have been a lot of muggles in need of Obliviating.

Three weeks, a pretty bauble soaked in history, and the death of his dirty muggle forbears served to further anchor him to the plane of the living. Two was better than one, after all.

There were no further incidents after that, something that had gladdened him. It was a great relief the soul-anchors Julius suggested finally seemed to be paying off, considering the crumbling state of Muggle London and the regular casualties incurred therein. Even when part of the south-side of Sprwley Market was breached by a bomb, the old Inner Market building blasted open, Tom did not lose himself. He merely did what everyone else living nearby did: Went to clear up the mess and see what of the building could be salvaged (or, in the case of an entrepreneurial few, gone to see what valuable goods could be picked out the rubble).

Now, given the morning’s events… Now, Tom was cautious. 

If two soul-anchors were insufficient to hold him on the right side of Death, how many would be? Furthermore, this seemed to suggest his anchors were no real help at all. Was that they temporarily appeared to stop his attacks a coïncidence rather than a direct effect of their existence? Or, perhaps, any relief they gave was ephemeral in its nature, meaning he would continuously need to further anchor himself to the mortal plane? 

The last possibility was frightful.

After he had, per Julius’ instruction, created his first soul-anchor in the bathroom three years earlier, Tom searched out every last scrap of information he could on their nature and making. There had not been much to find in the Hogwarts Library, though Alphard and Carina had long since granted him entry into the Black Library and all secrets held therein (though their residence was not somewhere he delighted in visiting, due to the soulwards around the property).

It was there Tom found his answers:

Properly, the soul-anchor he created was called a horcrux. By all but the most depraved of wizards, it was considered a vile thing. It was hard to work out why such a thing was considered so terrible, though he thought it likely because someone had to die by the creator’s hand in order to facilitate the making of one, more than anything else. Julius’ fast-thinking allowed Tom to create an object that would, should he die, glue his soul to the mortal plane and leave it, therefore, infeasible for him to cross into the murky waters of Death.

Allegedly, a soul-anchor rendered one immortal.

Soul magic was an obscure art abhorred by the many. Anybody could employ it upon oneself (anything with a soul could make use of it, in fact), but a wizards ability to employ it on _other_ beings had always been rare and was considered forgotten. That Julius held any idea of how to create a soul-anchor, much less to _help_ Tom do so, spoke volumes about the type of schooling the man received himself (something the shady professor was always tight-lipped about, despite his students’ pondering over the years). For his favourite teacher to be knowledgeable about such a taboo branch of magic, to wield it so effectively, he must have access to a source of knowledge far deeper and darker than that available at Hogwarts.

No matter the source of Julius’ knowledge, or the rarity with which he revealed any of the more interesting aspects of it, Tom was extremely grateful to the man. If the other professors had not summoned him when they did, it was very likely Tom’s spirit would have walked away into Death, leaving his body alive but empty, much in the way a victim of the Kiss’ was… Not quite alive and not properly dead, it could be assumed his soul would have been left in some sort of limbo, not able to pass to wherever it was souls went when life was over and too tightly caught by Death to return to his mortal form.

After the little information he found on horcruxes, in addition to Julius’ reticence on the subject beyond how to form one, Tom ventured a query to the only other adult he believed objective enough to broach such a delicate subject matter with: His own Head of House, Professor Slughorn. The Potions Master was a man with fingers jammed in many pastries, gathering all kinds of unusual people and objects to himself. During private luncheons, Slughorn regularly handed out priceless knowledge like candy. More than one enterprising Slytherin had been made or shattered at the weight of his words. If anybody would be willing to talk with Tom about something as taboo as soul magic, it would be _him_.

It was a gross understatement to say the conversation had not gone entirely well. Tom seemed to have scared the man a bit. 

Slughorn turned a ghastly avocado colour when asked about stability and power relative to the number seven, then completely locked-up at the mere _thought_ of somebody going so far to ensure their immortality as to create six horcruxes (a seventh slice of soul remaining within the mortal body). It was all academic but the Potions Master still looked highly disturbed. If Slughorn thought soul-anchors not to be trifled with, it was a certainty Tom should never allow anyone to discover he had his soul bound to even one external casing, let alone _two_.

Again, a question was raised: If two soul-anchors were not sufficient to bind him to the mortal plane, how many did he require? Would it be necessary to semi-regularly perform the acts needed to create a horcrux, if it followed true the effects of the soul-binding faded over time? How far did one go to achieve complete safety from the icy grip of Death?

As he stepped out the shower, skin scrubbed clean (almost raw), feeling rather more alive than when he went in, Tom wondered how far _he_ would be willing to go.

It seemed highly likely that, beyond a certain point, there would be some sort of greater effect on him if he continued to dabble in soul magic, though whether those consequences would be physical or purely mental was unclear. The books he leafed through in the Black Library cautioned the reader, citing the exploits of several great, if ultimately unfortunate, wizards who came to sticky ends through their use of soul magic. Some of those wizards eventually lost their bodies (because they had too little soul to sustain them? Or because their bodies were fatally wounded, leaving their spirits nowhere to go?), whereas others instead lost their minds.

Neither loss of form or wits was an agreeable outcome to Tom.

Dressing in cream corduroys and a soft, cotton shirt of a pale blue (something sure to annoy Borgin no end when he finally arrived at work, as his employer preferred they cater to the more dark and sober stereotype of Knockturn), Tom leaned forwards over the sink, staring into the mirror there.

If he leaned in close enough, he fancied there was a slight change to the colouring of his eyes, now tending ever so slightly towards violet than the icy blue-grey they were in his childhood. They also appeared more drawn up at the corners. Too, his skin seemed marginally paler – thinner, perhaps, as if he were made of china or paper rather than flesh and bone…

Were these effects of the two soul-anchors he already forged? If they were, he was grateful the changes were both external and minimal. There was no guarantee the effects would not be larger and farther reaching than a few mild alterations to his appearance, however, should he dare create _six_ anchors.

Sliding his arms into a tan jacket and retrieving his best-matching hat, Tom decided this was a subject that bore more thought. 

Later.

It did not do to rush things if it was unnecessary. For now, he wanted to put the incident at the undertaker’s behind him.

Besides, he knew he needed to hurry if he wanted to reach the White Admiral in time to quell his dearest Carina’s temper (a legendary thing among not only those of Slytherin House but Hogwarts as a whole). Five minutes before he was scheduled to arrive at lunch, Tom was tucking his watch into the pocket of his trousers and locking-down his flat with a few absent flicks of his wand.

            As he made to apparate, a little voice advised:

  
_Two is better than one, true – yet_ _**si**_ _ **x** _ _is better than two by far._

 

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

_posted: 2017-05-13_  
_edits: none_

  

 

 **It had ages been held as true, among Griffindors, that the blood of the covenant was thicker than the waters of the womb.** To deny a brother-in-house something, if you could technically give it, was pretty much treason. Mostly, what the house’s edicts asked for were camaraderie, solidarity in public (as his housemates so _kindly_ proved during the parselmouth débâcle), and an effort to do your best at everything. As McGonagall said the night of their Sorting, while you were a student at Hogwarts, your house was your family. They were the ones you had to answer to for your actions, be them good or bad.

As a Hogwarts first-year, Harry was surprised to find his schoolmate's all possessed one clear, commonly acknowledged idea: your house was more important than the family you were born to. To them, parents existed only to try and wreck your life (causing more havoc than they could possibly be worth). Then, Harry would’ve given anything to have known his own parents, just to experience what it was like to have somebody love you unconditionally, no matter your choices in life or the mistakes you made.

These days, he was beginning to think his old housemates might’ve been right. For the first time in his life, this made Harry a _normal_ young man… Even if his exasperation and aggravation at (and dismissal _of_ ) his mother’s helping hand made him feel a bit wretched and ungrateful…

 

                                           – _thoughts of Harry Potter, summer 1942_

 

 

 

 _ april _  
a mother's (somewhat overbearing) love

 

 

_** SOMETHING BLINDING ** ** approaches through the darkness   encroaching on his mind. **Buzzing – teeth rattling and indistinct. Static fills his head, rendering him unable to formulate words. He claps his hands across his ears, eyes squeezed tight shut and a voiceless cry catching in the depths of his throat._

_His whole being rings with a thrill of thick   bright power._

_A wall of fog shines internally with dazzling   otherworldly light–_

_Chaos rends his world as suddenly and viciously as a Killing Curse from behind. Blazing streams of white-hot radiance swoop through the air towards his crumpling form, the gaseous forms of the aptly-named Angelic Wrath swooping through the night._

_As if from miles away, Darius shouts out in terror._

_How the stridency of it deafens Harry in a way the magic can’t. The shriek whistles about his head, impacting hard with his shuddering eardrums like a spear through the crust of a frozen lake. Automatically, he shies away from the unnaturally high pitch of his comrade’s cry._

_The enormity of the power loosed catches up with him. Already hunched over, he collapses to the ground. He curls in on himself instinctively, Devil’s Snare retreating from the sun. Apathetic to his plight, the curse gets on with its nefarious work._

_Speech isn’t the only function extinguished in him. He’s struggling to stay even vaguely coherent. Just a single thought grows in his splintering mind, spiralling, swirling around itself until it becomes a waterspout, asking over and over: which of that bastard’s minions could possibly wield such powerful, dangerous magic?_

_He comes up empty   and..._

          It’s a dream. Just a dream.

               This can’t be happening… not again. Not possible. And… let’s be honest, he can’t very well die _twice…_

            Except… one day he’ll have to die again, won’t he?

         How can anyone die twice?

_Shivering against the onslaught, the last thought he manages to process – between final gasps of horrified awe at the Brilliant magic attacking his own – is one of overwhelming dread, of fear for the remaining members of his team._

_Sharp and sudden   begetting complete silence and stillness   like the strings of a harp vanished mid-song–_

_As quickly as it began   the spell cuts off  
_ _but not because it’s been repealed._

_The coarse   white magic turns and whirls above his fading consciousness   his body falling numb to the world. His flesh is too feverish   too overheated to reconcile with the snow. His head’s vinous… like packed with cotton wool._

_Allowing himself to sink into the warm   terrifying oblivion that always accompanies unconsciousness–_

_That comfort never comes._

_Instead, it’s cold – so very cold all of a sudden._  
   Icy-chill water laps around his shoulders   burrowing right down to his soul–  
_the roar of a waterfall–_  
                                                                                                                       _flat shadow and pale   insubstantial lines–_

                                                       A place that’s not the world at all.

_His eyes snap open_

                                                 and he finally woke, gasping for breath. Curled in on himself in the centre of the bed, his real-eyes shot open unseeingly, pupils blown as wide as the irises surrounding them. Blinded by the sudden influx of light, he immediately closed them again.

Shaking fingers clutched his knees tight to his chest against the Brilliance threatening to smother him in his nightmare, his whole posture was that of a quivering hedgehog trying to protect itself from further injury. The duvet had been tossed asunder sometime in the night, leaving him at the mercy of the frigid dawn air; it suggested he’d been thrashing at one point, probably rather violently – his pillows were lobbed clear across the room.

Grappling around, his hands found the soft, twisted fabric of the counterpane where it bunched up around his legs; he dragged it back up his body before hauling himself into a sitting position. Eyes pinched shut again, he searched himself for some wellspring of calm; he found none. He took a few deep, mechanical breaths, one hand slung across his clammy forehead.

Slowly, he reöpened his eyes.

Rather than the complete white-blindness he experienced directly after waking, Harry’s vision now came in a blur of blue-tinged monochrome. Staring up at the ceiling, it took a few minutes for his crappy sight to clear enough that he could make out the runes his mother helped him place there when he was young and dumb – apotropaic symbols half based in true-magic and half in the belief of a child. They twisted around one another, rolling across the ceiling like autumn leaves scurrying along the ground, glowing from within with green and gold and blue lights that chased one another across the room.

Harry would dearly like to claim the ‘dream catching’ properties of the warding marks hadn’t served a purpose in years – not true, though. When he was younger, his nightmares mainly consisted of Voldemort’s high-pitched laughter, the wails and pleas of his doomed birth-mother and a whole load of green light.

As an adult, they were worse.

As unscathed as he outwardly pretended to be by the war, some things were destined to remain with you your entire life. One of them was the carnage in Petersburg he often dreamt of… though, that wasn’t really what the horror of the nightmare was about…

With a deep sigh, he roughly shoved back the blankets again. Harry swung his legs around so he was sat on the edge of the bed, briefly holding his head in his hands. A pounding lay behind his eyes, a symptom of reeling thoughts. Sometimes, it seemed his own mind was pitched against him – it insisted on dwelling in the past, where things were safe and done, regardless of whether the rest of him liked it or not. Only he could get into a fight with his own subconscious.

Not really seeing the point of trying to get back to sleep – it was gone four in the morning – he slid from the bed. He ignored the garishly crimson slippers his father gave him last Yule, braving the cool slate of the floor. He stalked agitatedly towards the washroom.

When he entered, runemarks for light flickered into life on the ceiling. As if aware of his Melancholy, the illumination spreading through the bathroom was similarly thin, casting an otherworldly pall of light and shade across his beleaguered features. The mirror barely came down to chest level – mainly because he didn’t fancy dragging himself out of bed in the mornings only to end up staring at the full length of scars crossing his front. He could see his face in it, though; staring sorrowfully back at himself, his reflection’s expression somehow looked even more exhausted than his own.

Fuck, he’d seen corpses that looked more likely to break out into a song and dance number.

Heavy lines hung beneath his eyes, the skin darkened there as if bruised – the effects of his regularly-disturbed sleep. Green irises peeked out below heavy lids; gone was the candid brightness they had when he was a teenager, now masked with a spider-web film of carefully guarded intuition and a native distrust that could crush a guy just for trying. One hand came up to run through his black, slightly curling hair, which settled across tense shoulders (as was the current fashion for the heirs of Great Houses), tugging it out his face. He glared at his own frown and the downturned moue of his lips… On his sister, the expression would be utterly adorable – downright ridiculous on _him_.

He looked a sodding mess, no denying it.

His forehead pressed against the mirror, eyes staring tiredly down into the maw of the sink. Harry wondered if he’d look this rough if he were at Hogwarts. Would he learn to smile again if he went back? Would the colour return to his cheeks in the castle’s halls, the brush of it’s magic bringing his deathly-cold flesh back to life? Or would he continue to fade-out even under the castle’s care, this tenuous grip he had on his body finally failing, soul slipping away into the chill waters of Death? Could Hogwarts give him the will to live longer than remaining with his family would?

He didn’t know.

Didn’t care, most days.

He knew what Healer Ilyiah told him: _“If you cannot find something to hold onto, all the treatments in the world will not tether you to Life. Frankly, I find myself surprised you function at all. Colina’s power must have been greater than even he knew… Though, there is a good chance what keeps you on your feet is stubbornness.”_

Too, Harry recalled what Colina told him, back when he was forced to do the abhorrent man’s bidding: _“You can kill me, Hadrian – yes, you can. To do so would only to be killing yourself, no? Without my power binding you into your body, the very thing what stitched it together, where do you think you would be at this time? You know, as they say, the ninth gate calls us all home.”_

If he wasn’t able to find the will to hold himself out of Death, the question wasn’t whether he would rather remain under house arrest in France for the next decade, or be forced to endure a smug Dumbledore crowing over his questionable defeat of the Good Lord… The question became, instead, where would he prefer to die? Was it better to spare his family the pain of knowing what was happening to him, to die suddenly at a distance with no lead-up (from their perspective)? Or was it better to slowly waste under the worried eyes of his mother, to endure both her and Effie’s sadness firsthand?

He sighed again. No answers… because there were no certainties in life.

Three nights ago, ensconced in his room at the Honey Yard, turned crooked by the influence of a cocktail of resurging hope – something he thought gone from him long ago – and sheer surprise – another thing he was largely unfamiliar with these days – Harry effectively made a snap-decision to take Slughorn’s offer of apprenticeship. By check-out yesterday, bare beneath the too bright, too revealing light of day, he understood it was necessary to fully consider what might happen if he _did_ take the position just to have a legitimate reason for returning to Hogwarts…

He shook his head. Too early – the memories of his hellish sleep were far too fresh to be considering anything life-altering.

Shoving aside all thoughts on the immensity of the decision now facing him, Harry pulled away from the mirror, turning his gaze away from his bedraggled reflection in disgust.

A rising flood of sighs and huffs were his litany as he slowly showered and dressed, groomed and glamoured, doing all he could to hide both illness and the yet-again-sleepless night he’d experienced. He knew he looked world-weary and downright depressed most mornings – not exactly unreasonable, considering he wasn’t even properly alive… technically speaking.

Not what mattered most at the moment.

What _was_ important was that his family didn’t see him in such a shitty state. He didn’t need his mother getting all frantic over a spot of nothing.

When Harry arrived in the solarium for breakfast, it was already six-thirty. He got in very late last night, heading straight to bed, and neither his mother nor sister were present yet this morning. It was disappointing if unsurprising – both ladies liked their beauty sleep. He grumbled a bit while pulling out his chair, having hoped to speak with Dorea about his meeting at the Oriental Club three evenings previous.

Breakfast was presented by a house elf who went unseen and unheard. Experience told him ignoring the food wouldn’t make it disappear; rather, it would encourage Bea – the Head Elf – to send her underlings after him with wooden spoons and rolling pins. Shuddering at the prospect of elf-attack, he quickly dug into the meal. At least this food was ten-times better than the slop they served up in Nurmengard – an insult to ‘slop’ – consisting of fresh fruit, crêpes and a small bowl of unsweetened porridge.

As he ate, bathed in weak, early morning sunlight, he allowed himself to appreciate the peace and beauty of Château de Potiers.

The solarium was by far his favourite room in the house. It was quite a marvel. With impossibly tall windows encompassing all the Château’s three floors and extending for another story above to better capture the light, the solarium more than lived up to its name. It was an indoor garden bursting with overflowing beds and baskets of flowers in every colour, tropical palms, birds of paradise and orange trees. It sometimes rained for the benefit of the humidity-loving flora, which was used to warmer climates, but today the atmosphere was dry and crisp, no sense of a manufactured storm weighing on the air.

The table he occupied sat at the centre of the room. It was an expensive, contemporary thing, carved out of some strange wood Harry never bothered to learn the name of; the horrible thing was shockingly purple – not to most’s taste. Needless to say, this particular piece of furniture was his mother’s pride and joy. It was a wedding gift to the new Duchesse Poitiers from their family's most loyal vassal, the Marquis de Malafois (a fact Harry never failed to find amusing, given his future-history with the Malfoy scion).

Slowly working his way through two helpings of everything bar porridge, Harry’s mind turned over some of the funnier societal differences in the past. That the Malafois were _below_ him, as far as the Wizarding World was concerned, was just the tip of the wand. Though the culture shock had long faded into tired acceptance, elements of surrealness still remained in his life. Now, years later, he wondered whether or not it was a big mistake for the Potters to keep him largely out of the wider world during his first year with them; later, they even sent him to school far from their main seat of power, though that was mainly with hopes of keeping his secret under wraps. It worked okay, he guessed.

Thoughts of his schooling and the Malafois (with their rather well-documented love for all things ostentatious, even in the forties), brought along wonderings of whether or not his mother would ask him to attend the upcoming Thirty Days of Summer festivities with her. Harry hated going. It was a festival hosted annually by Natasha Nikolayevna (the magical discharge created was used to maintain the wards on the Empress’ capital city), one which was always busy, loud and abound with enough politicking to make even the most sea-learned man hurl.

He was just considering the pros and cons of outright refusing to go to the thing, when his mother herself stepped lightly into the solarium.

Currently garbed in floaty robes of pale mint green, Dorea Potter clashed horribly with her preferred table. Not quite alive until she consumed her first dose of caffeine, Harry’s adoptive mother was still the beauty at forty-something she was twenty years earlier: though she had the characteristic long, aquiline nose and highly brushed cheekbones, Dorea’s soft jaw and gentle colouring was unlike that of the other Blacks; with a slight frame, pale blonde hair and honeyed eyes, she was the embodiment of her mother, Violetta Bulstrode, from her gait to her countenance.

The witch was demure but a force to be reckoned with when crossed; the respect Harry had for her was unparalleled, rivalled only by the love he held for Grandmother Violetta herself.

Poised or not, he still wasn’t sure he was willing to argue with Dorea if she wanted him to transport her to Kitezh for the festival. Yes, he wanted to avoid it, every year if he could, but it was generally better for your health to do whatever his mother told you to. She tended to stay out of Islen business by habit but there wasn’t any doubt she could cow anyone she wanted to. He’d dearly like to see what would happen if she and Grindelwald were ever in the same room.

He sometimes thought her tenacity was the reason his adoptive-father spent as much time as possible working. Whenever this idea crossed his mind, he brushed it aside. Despite the contractual nature of his parents’ bonding, he believed Charlus did indeed love his mother very much; that wasn’t to say he’d ever seen evidence Dorea did anything more than tolerate the man in return. The two had a certain level of mutual respect, a rapport, but it was clear to Harry that Charlus rubbed his mother up the wrong way even on a good day.

His mother was of an old kind, possessing of wild, unpredictable magic, and could be an extremely dangerous woman when angered. She could have been magnificent as a war-queen but preferred a quiet life; her relative solitude from wizarding society was her own choice.

Looking not-quite-put-together, she added a cube of sugar and dash of milk to the tea she had just found the faculty to pour. Then, she tried to stir the beverage with a delicate stir of her index finger–

_shatter_

                                                                                          –and the result left a lot to be desired: one teacup fractured into a dozen pieces and a quickly spreading pool of violet-tinged tea.

As he said, his mother wasn't quite on the quaffle until she consumed her first cup of tea. At seven in the morning, accidents like this one weren’t all uncommon. More than once, they had incited arguments in the Potter household.

Harry quickly intervened in her mess, placating, “I’ve got it, Mami.”

He repaired the fragile cup with a deft twist of his wand, careful to ensure the faint curl of his lips appeared amused not deprecating. He thought Dorea a lovely, kind, beautiful woman… but too, he acknowledged she was of an extremely sensitive temperament – Blacks will be Blacks. On this occasion, she didn’t seem particularly abraided; she merely smiled as the scattered amethyst and white shards of porcelain swarmed into the air, neatly reforming, sealing together like puzzle pieces to leave no indication anything happened.

Shame he couldn’t do that with life.

“Thank you, dear,” his mother said appreciatively. “I shall get the hang of the trick one day.”

She gingerly mopped up the spilt liquid with a napkin, immediately serving herself another cupful of tea.

Lightly, she asked, “You returned this morning, or late last night? I didn’t hear you come in.”

“Last night – didn’t want to wake you.”

She sniffed. “How did your meeting go? I’ve only met Master Slughorn at a few of the Islenders’ more… _non-optional_ ministerial conventions that your father _never_ seems to be able to get out of…” She trailed off, looking a bit exasperated, before picking up her thoughts. “What type of man is he? Charlus claims a true-Slytherin through and through – but, between you and I – your father’s not always… shall we say, the _best_ judge of character.”

The end of her sentence came in a conspiratorial whisper, a small smile and infectiously mischievous sparkle in her eyes. Harry gathered himself – when she was in the mood for conversation, it tended to go on quite a while.

“He wasn’t wrong,” Harry said, nodding a bit over his own cup. “Man’s definitely a Slytherin, from what I saw.”

“And what was the meeting regarding?”

Short and to the point. Marriage with the most Gryffindorish of Gryffindors had quashed most the natural subtlety his mother’s heritage should afford her. She wasn’t much one to beat around the bush – probably a trait he got from her.

“Slughorn feels like a career shift. Probably to something that involves more sitting around all day drinking uisge, I’d guess… But, and here’s the kicker, he’s not managed to dupe– ah, did I say _dupe…_ I meant persuade… He’s not managed to _persuade_ anyone to take over his position as Hogwarts’ Potions Master, yet,” Harry explained, lips curved wide with wicked amusement. “Basically, he’s searching for some poor schmuck to train up. Probably so he doesn’t have to actually do any work but still gets all the benefits.”

Catching on quickly, his mother surmised, “And he has asked that _you_ be this person? He wants you as apprentice?”

His head bobbed.

“He _does_ realise you’ve a mastery – partly by study, part by proxy – already, no? You have had job offers pouring in from all departments of the Islen Ministry since the war’s culmination. Even a few here in France, despite general misgivings.”

The misgivings were warranted and none of those jobs were worth taking.

“Oh, I think he knows alright. Didn’t stop him acting like he’d bagged me… I might’ve–” he confessed contritely... because the other night he must’ve been a damn open book “– _possibly_ looked a bit enthusiastic when he made the offer. I tried not to give anything away, wouldn’t usually… but… you know, it’s _Hogwarts…_ Well, anyway, I told him I’d have to think about it.”

His mother wasn’t fully aware of his failing health. She did know plenty of _other_ reasons why Harry might need to think real hard about whether or not taking a position at Hogwarts was wise.

Running on the wavelength he wanted, Dorea pointed out, “You are no fourteen-year-old boy who writes all his emotions across his face, any longer. Who had never even _heard_ of occlumency, let alone put it into practice.”

Mouth opening automatically, he found himself scoffing, “Sure, if you can call what I’ve got _occlumency_ at all…”

Personally, he preferred to think of his main defence against mind magic being that others weren’t particularly receptive to feeling Death whenever entering his mind. Plus, he had the even-longer-standing protection of his memories being, respectively, as sober and organised as hell and scrambled eggs.

His mother ignored his comment entirely, continuing, “You’re a _very_ capable wizard, Harry,” as if he never interrupted her. “While Jameson’s warning was certainly true at the time – Master MacCòhain and Lord Dumbledore likely _are_ skilled Legilimense who could have detected your deceit had you attended there before protecting your mind – you are now an adult. All of you are on the same side, yes? Why should they interfere with your life?”

 _MacCòhain?_ He probably wouldn’t. Dumbledore, on the other hand… _Why oh why_ would his one-time headmaster interfere in something not concerning him?

“Perhaps because that man never did know when to leave well enough alone,” he muttered sourly.

Dumbledore had his fingers stuck in so many pies it was surprising he had space to hold a wand – at least in the future. One way or another, the man interfered in just about everything that went on in Europe; just the sheer number of titles following the man’s name was testament to that.

And just look – the one time Dumbledore _didn’t_ make a fuss of himself… well, it meant he carelessly let his old pal Grindelwald go on a deadly rampage across the continent, pretending he didn’t have the power to stop it. Except, Harry was always aware his old headmaster _could_ because, as a first-year, he once read on a choccy-frog card the man defeated Grindelwald; seeing as other facts on it were accurate enough (regarding Flamel, at least), it didn’t seem likely it lied about the professor’s eventual victory over the Good Lord.

Too late, in Harry’s opinion. Far too late.

His mother made motion to say something, offer up some bit of advice or comfort that would miss the mark. He was saved from finding out what she intended to say, fortunately, by a bundle of dark-blonde curls bounding into the solarium. Below the mad riot of hair, he saw a frilly white, sack-like dress and a pair of overstuffed slippers shaped like little puffskeins.

Catching sight of him – apparently having learned to see through the obscuring mask of hair across her eyes – his sister darted straight to his seat, moving faster than a psychotic cornish pixie. He folded her into a hug, the thing tugging at his lips as close to a smile as he was capable of these days.

“Harry! You were gone!” she wailed, clinging to him as if he might disintegrate any second.

He sighed down at her with softening eyes. “Had to go to the Isles for a couple of days, little love. Just business.”

Effie’s eyebrows drew together into a cute frown. “I don’t like it,” she complained. “I miss you.”

Harry really ought to stick ‘miserable sigh’ as his default setting and be done with it.

“I know, Ef, I know.”

Even though she was only five, Effie quickly grew to be the most important member of the Potter family. A surprise arrival for his parents who – until he arrived from the future, claiming to be their grandson – believed they couldn’t have children, his little sister was spoiled rotten. Not in the same way the Dursleys spoiled Dudley, buying him everything he ever asked for and letting him eat until he rivalled a young sperm whale for size, but in the way any family might find themselves doting on the smallest, unexpected member of their family.

Thinking about it, the way Effie was treated by their parents wasn’t unlike the was Mr and Mrs Weasley treated Ginny. As the only daughter born to a seven child family and youngest, to compound that, Ginny always got the best the Weasleys could afford. It meant her second-hand robes were a bit less frayed than her brothers’ and her books not quite as battered; too, though, she received at least twice as much attention from her parents as any of her siblings, from what Harry saw when staying with the family over the summers.

Fucking Ginny… In so many ways, his stuck-in-the-past predicament was all her fault. He hoped she regretted it.

_Sigh._

Spoiled or not, Harry loved his baby sister dearly. She was the only one he had, after all, and she was cute as a fluffy, freshly-bathed crup bouncing in a field of flowers. Nothing was as sweet as her.

“…are you down here in your night things, dear one?” Harry heard his mother ask – he missed the start of the question. “I doubt Poliana’s been remiss in her duties.”

Dorea had her hands on her lips, eyes a bit cross; at the same time, there was a gentle, amused shine to her, showing that she wasn’t truly angry. Effie, though, looked up at their mother as if she were receiving the scalding of a lifetime. If their mother was capricious, his sister was downright _scary_ in the unpredictability of her tantrums.

“No,” the girl agreed meekly, “but Polly said she saw Harry… I just wanted to–”

Another stern look from Dorea.

Thankfully seeming mollified rather than explosive, Effie huffed, “All right, I’m sorry… I just wanted to see Harry.”

Seeming to accept his sister’s reasoning, Dorea let Effie’s lack of proper dress slide. Not like it really mattered, anyway.

“Come along, dearheart,” she said, taking Effie’s hand and leading her out the solarium. “Let us get you something more appropriate to wear. You mustn’t walk around the house in your nightdress, you never know when we might have guests.”

He watched them go, grateful for his mischevious little sister’s timely interruption.

Fact was, Harry didn’t know how to answer his mother’s questions about this morning’s dubiousness over Slughorn’s offer. Or, at least, he didn’t know how to reply without bringing up the fact he was soon due to – as Hermione would have said – shuffle off this mortal coil and run off to join the bleedin’ choir invisible (she was weird like that, sometimes). So, Dorea would have to be lead to believe he didn’t dare risk going to Hogwarts because he couldn’t chance Dumbledore or MacCòhain working out he was a time-traveller, possibly putting their whole family at risk.

No, he didn’t have any idea what to say to her right now. Perhaps he shouldn’t have told her what Slughorn wanted at all… but, well, she would’ve found out eventually – she always did. Just lucky she’d gone off to help Effie dress.

He was incredibly relieved to be off the rack… right until the moment Dorea turned back to face him, pinning him with a look that said ‘We _will_ be continuing this discussion later’, brokering no room for argument.

 _Damn_.

That was it… Harry was going to hide in his study for a while, have a look over those new arithmancy texts. If he was lucky, she would’ve forgotten their conversation by the time he ventured back out into the rest of the house. Trying to work out how to make a portkey was about as simple as trying to convince acromantula to mate with basilisks, yes, but it was still more fun than being interrogated by Dorea Potter. She could give the Visionaire a run for their money, even on her kindest days.

 

 

 

 **As it was, Harry’s mother found no chance to confront him for another two days.** Held off by a variety of Effie-related activities and by his constant avoidance of her when his sister wasn’t present, the inevitable was kept at bay. Shame it couldn’t be put off forever.

It was the sunny hour of six in the morning when his mother finally managed to corner him at the breakfast table. That had been nearly forty minutes ago, now – his patience was beginning to wane.

Perhaps he should just forgo mealtimes altogether? It wasn’t like he really needed to eat, far as he could tell. It would be uncomfortable but discomfort was relative with Dorea breathing down your neck.

                                 “–arry? Harry, dear?” she said repeatedly, trying to recapture his attention.

Truth was, she’d been reprimanding and fussing over him, in equal measure, for the last half an hour. At this point, he was mostly tuning her out. He couldn’t help it. There was just this natural instinct to ignore repetitive sounds – instinct borne of blocking out hollering inmates, the musical-saw throat singing of banshees and the constant drip-drip-dripping of water against the stone floor of his cell.

No, it did not escape him that he was comparing his mother to torture.

“Honestly, Harry, we were talking, you know?” she let out a slow breathe of frustration, taking hold of his hand across the table. “You look a thousand miles away.”

“In Alba,” he claimed, not wanting her to know he simply wasn’t paying attention at this point.

Releasing his hand so she could idly feed leftover bits of breakfast to the solarium’s birdlife, Dorea said, “If you wish to accept Master Slughorn’s offer, I think you should.”

Apparently, ‘Alba’ translated directly to ‘Hogwarts’ in Dorea’s mind. Fair enough – not much else there, he supposed.

“As I was saying before you drifted off, you’re no child, a boy without occlumency training. You have grown into a fine young man these last years, my darling boy – we are all very proud of you… but…” She smiled at him and it was more amused than sardonic, despite her tone. “Surely you shall eventually tire of all this lounging around with your poor old mother. You’re no flaneur by nature, dear. It’s not that I don’t appreciate your presence – it certainly does Effie the world of good – but you must desire something _more_.”

Gently, she asked, “Going back to Hogwarts would make you happy, would it not?” Then, to his dubiously offered nod, she proposed, “So _go…_ What reason have you not to?”

“Because…” he forced out, thinking very hard over what he could safely say that wouldn’t make him sound dimmer than a troll. Last thing he needed was her learning of his condition. “Because… well, I can’t very well just do whatever the hell I want–

                                                                                                                                                        “Language, Harry!”

                                                                                                                                                                                                 “–to do! Grindelwald might be locked away in that shi– uh, that _skuzz_ hole, war declared dead and done – but there’s still cleanup out there…”

He cast around for more words, coming out with, “Enriching Europe’s economy, finding the missing… rebuilding towns, communities… I can’t very well just abandon others to that, can I? I’m only supposed to be ‘recuperating’… I’ll be called up to help at some point.”

As he spoke, he pointedly averted his gaze from Dorea, forcing himself to go on without checking her reaction. Whenever he started talking about other people needing his help, conversations between them tended to get headed.

 _It’s either **this…** or the full, unadulterated truth,_ Harry reminded himself. And he couldn’t go with the latter – what a shitshow that’d be.

By the gods, he’d be mad to let her know what was _really_ wrong with him; he couldn’t press upon her the burden of knowing his very soul might be slipping away from Life, a fate potentially worse than common death, a destruction of consciousness and soul. Might as well tell her he’d recently taken an interest in snogging dementors, too, and plans to take a mozy over to Azkaban to see if any of them might be up for a fling. Melancholy was a very rare but very _serious_ condition – even magical medicine couldn’t do anything. The only one able to halt the progression of the wasting was himself… Problem was, he couldn’t find it in himself to care to.

So, yeah, his excuses might be having a horrible affect on his mother’s mood but… the truth would be far worse.

The problem with powerful meteoromancers was that they could be as spurious as that they held dominion over. Tempestuous and often too quick to fly off the handle, once incited, Dorea’s temper was only exacerbated by the feral nature of her magic. The dangers her power could bring had long lead the witch to keep as tight a leash on her emotions as possible, lest the consequences of her anger be more than bargained for; in this, the success of her efforts was matched only by the spectacular nature of her failures.

 _Kaboom_.

“ _Help…”_ his mother stated faintly, only the slightest hint of question in her voice.

The bewildered quality of her words didn’t last long. Once she fully processed Harry’s rambling, her response rose in volume considerably.

“ _Help?_ I watched you go out smiling with your boys, full of hope and energy, only to come back alone, covered in blood – shattered bones, vanished ribs, wounds enough to kill, take you from me! Do you think I wasn’t worried _every time_ you went off on some lamebrained mission?” she demanded irately, words slowing just enough for Harry to begin replying and get instantly cut off.

“I _was_. It was what you wanted– no, _needed_ to do, though… _for yourself_. But I see how it’s left you…”

She paused briefly to draw breath, then continued her tirade.

“Do you _honestly_ believe me unaware of how little sleep you take? Of the _night-terrors_ and the _guilt_! How could I _not_ see how quickly your wand’s drawn at sudden noise? Or how… how, when you think you are along and Effie disturbs you, those runes on that funny wand of yours glow like you mean to curse without question.”

His mother rattled all this off with a supercilious scowl capable of flattening even the strongest heart, browbeating the bearer into believing they were in the wrong. This didn’t stop Harry fiercely interjecting – though it probably went unheard – that he would _never, ever_ hurt Effie.

Dorea ploughed on, regardless. “Do you honestly think me _oblivious_ to the affect that dratted war had on you?”

Any and all attempts he made to defend himself were ruthlessly squashed. In the end, Harry just hung his head tiredly, feeling oddly abashed in face of her unexpected vehemence. He’d know what he said would upset her, but didn’t manage to accurately anticipate the level of response. She must’ve already been wound tighter than he realised.

 _It’s this or the truth_ , his mind supplied again, turning it into a mantra of sorts.

“No. _Of course_ I know – you are my son and a mother _always_ knows,” she concluded. “I refuse to let you back out there to hunt down dratted war criminals for the sheer pleasure of assuaging all this misplaced guilt over people you couldn’t save–”

_Merlin woman, breath!_

                                                                                                                                                                                         “–anyway. _Circe_ , Harry, you have done your duty! I daresay Her Imperial Majesty has enough chauvinists at beck and call – she can afford to loose reigns on _one_.”

He wasn’t really sure how to respond to that. Brushing off her words as baseless would only result in further fighting about his dysthymic state of being. If he was going to be truly honest with her, _that_ would cause an even longer, more explosive argument. Both options were about as attractive as tits on a troll. No dodging was perfect – in the end, the only viable choice was to take the lesser curse and hope for the best.

“I– I–” he struggled to chuck together something suitable to say “–I guess I kept fighting because it’s what I know to do – and there’s so _much_ left to do. Still so much to do… You _know_ how much damage has been done!”

This was as close to passion as he could get these days.

His voice grew stronger still as he continued, “Hell, there’s so much damage that could _still be done_. I couldn’t just… Well…”

Then he made a fatal error – he glanced up at Dorea. She wore an unimpressed expression that involved steely eyes and both brows raised. Losing his bottle, Harry shrugged, backing down and reverting to the ‘play it off as nothing’ option. The long pause did nothing to help him find words of amelioration.

“I thought I hid it better,” he finally mumbled, flushing.

Under her gaze, he was nine years old again and trying to explain to his science teacher that he hadn’t _meant_ to break the laws of chemistry… It just happened. For muggleborns, accidental magic was about as fun as scurvy.

The windows began to rattle faintly, as if a sudden gust had caught them. It quickly became clear his mother didn’t take too kindly to his statement – and general handling of her accusations – and, for only the second time since coming to the past, Dorea managed to remind him of an irate Molly Weasley disciplining the Twins following a particularly cruel prank.

 _It’s all in the screech_.

“Hidden it! _Hidden it?_ What were you thinking even _trying_ to hide a thing like that, foolish child? If you need help, you only have to say,” she declared dangerously, hands shuddering. “For the love of–” she began, then shook her head and took another tack. “You saw people die– Killed others and were nearly killed yourself– Injured almost beyond repair, almost lost to me– us– You…”

Each of her intended sentences were aborted, the witch stumbling over her words multiple times. She swallowed, eyes shut, and gathered herself.

Finally, she managed to bite out, “ _Hell indeed_ , by the time it ended you’d been captured, we thought you were dead, and only the gods know what you suffered at the hands of those– those… _des salauds!_ ”

 _Not good_.

Harry closed his eyes and counted backwards from ten… Which, he suspected, was precisely what Dorea was doing a moment earlier. It didn’t help. ‘Calming’ methods or not, the prognosis wasn’t great.

He was in real trouble now. He could be sure of it because, even when furious, he wasn’t sure he’d ever heard his mother – the epitome of a well-mannered, pureblood lady, temper or not – _swear_ before… Not even when he stumbled home in the middle of the night with his leg hanging off.

The behaviour of the solarium’s bird life alerted him to the fact Dorea was genuinely losing control, not just _sounding_ incensed: pigeons trilled and scattered, spooked budgies chattered uncomfortably, a flock of pheasants (his father recently brought them back from Asia) vanished into the scrub, and their pair of macaws, once belonging to Aunt Marcia, muttered to one another indiscretely. A small flurry of red cardinals rushed over the table, dropping crêpe leftovers on Harry’s face in the hurry to reach a safe roost.

The second sign of impending disaster was the way the light became too pale, growing thin as it spilled into the solarium a bruised-yellow colour indicative of stormy weather. Tilting his head back to peer out the windows, he saw clouds rolling out of nowhere.

 _Not again_.

The rattling windows clashed and banged, vibrating in their frames, and, hearing the sickening sound of splintering glass, Harry prepared himself to subdue his mother if necessary. Her magic couldn’t be allowed to take her anger out on the room more than it already was. Unlike the last time he witnessed her whipped up into such a tissy – off the battlefield, at least – Harry now had enough power to set her straight.

“ _Mother,”_ he murmured soothingly, as if speaking to a skittish unicorn, “you need to calm down – you’ll wake Effie…” _and shatter the solarium,_ went entirely without saying.

Even as he feared Dorea’s anger would overspill, that she would mistakenly bring the entire Château down on their heads – counterproductive, considering she _protected_ their home from Colina when the monster tried storming it – it abated.

Taking a few slow, deep breaths, the witch practically snarled, _”You – have – done – your – duty,”_ punctuating each word with a heavy gap to reïnforce her point. “Above and beyond! That Order of Merlin wouldn’t have been for idle show, you must know?”

Her hands still shook. Harry was swift to nod, agreeing with her in the hopes of taming some of the wild magic still dancing about the solarium. The birds had fallen completely silent – presumably hiding – and a press of heavy clouds remained visible through the glass roof.

“I want you to– No, I _order_ you to do _what you want_ with your life,” she ground furiously, teeth tight, lips barely moving. “If you want to go to Hogwarts – and I know you do – then _go_. If potions is your passion, pursue it. We didn’t bring you into this world just to watch you throw everything away.”

Sometimes, Harry wondered if his Dorea remembered she hadn’t actually given birth to him… He let out a heavy breath and pushed his chair back from the funny purple table, going around to where his mother sat on the other side; with each step, he further resigned himself to what he now needed to do.

“Alright, Mami,” he whispered when finally reaching her, knowing a lost argument when he saw one. He put his hands on her shoulders softly, adding, “If it’ll make you happy, I’ll tell Slughorn yes.”

No matter that potions was _not_ his passion at all, though he certainly knew it could sometimes be a relaxing activity. Sure, he adapted a few recipes nicked from the future, changing them to better serve the sick, starving civilians besieged by the war, but that hardly meant he wanted to make a _career_ out the subject.

He _did_ want to go back to Hogwarts, though – see it one last time before he… Well, in case of the worst. Harry’s memories of the castle were some of his most cherished. He felt a strong need to return to her walls.

If he survived the Melancholy, he did have _some_ interest in what he might be able to pick up from the school’s Potions Master. He could hardly deny finding the prospect of teaching a pleasant one and, as a bonus, perhaps he’d be there long enough to stop anyone having to suffer _Snape_. Course, there was a question of whether or not he’d bore of potions once it completely struck him that – unlike his tutor at Koschey – Slughorn was in no way a petite, Middle Eastern beauty preferring an arguably-indecent robe length.

Soul sickness or not, he’d have to stick this out now… because Dorea was shaking her head with a bitter, resigned smile on her lips.

“Not to make me happy, Harry…” she said very quietly, so he had to strain to make out her words. “To make _you_ happy.”

So much for indecision… His mother was already convinced taking Slughorn’s proposition was best for him. Who was he to try and change her mind? If there was one thing he’d learned, it was that railing against the axiom ‘mother knows best’ was the quest of a fool.

 

 

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

_posted: 2017-07-08_  
_edits: none_

  

**"But it can hardly be!" his friend gasped, staring at him with wide, disbelieving eyes glimmering in violet hues.** "Here threads of future are all awkward– twisted– tied with those of past... You are caught in one web, impossible circle... Khaydan, I do not... how can this be correct?"

With a humourless chuckle, Harry replied honestly, "I don't understand it myself."

"There is what to understand? Futures  _broken_! Of sureness, this is omen of drawn-out, agonising death – of life spent on brink of oblivion but never allowed to slip over that edge. Of torture eternal...

"You must not go tonight!"

Harry sighed and turned back to his friend. "No choice but to go. Someone has to."

"Yes, they do... but whoever said this one must be you? Let one older, experienced, who has not what seems to be near-death sentence hanging above!"

"You know I can't do that, Boris. The fact is... my future's always looked like this, for as long as I've been here... You just never looked before." Sighing again, he asked, "Can I trust you with a secret?"

"Always."

"I need your help," he told his friend. "My future looks like that because... well, my future's my past and my past is my future."

Boris glanced up quizzically, blond hair flopping into his eyes. "That makes not sense," he declared.

"It makes more sense than you might think," Harry insisted. Frowning, he wondered how best to explain. Just bite the bullet, he guessed. "I'm a time traveller. I was going from one geographical point to another... and somehow I fell through time, instead."

"One bad apparation?"

"No – it was another way of travelling, called a portkey. You don't have them here... or not yet. They've not been invented."

 

                     _– conversation between Harry Potter and Boris Shchurov, summer 1942_

 

 

 

 _ may_  
the winds of change

 

 

 ** AS HARRY'S PATH SEEMED ** ** to have been picked by proxy, there was nothing to officially agonise over till he actually needed to settle into his new position at Hogwarts. ** Slughorn’s response to Harry’s notice of acceptance came on thick, look-at-me parchment, full of smug assurance the man was sure from the get-go he would be snagging his desired apprentice. A date was suggested for the required relocation to Alba, which Harry immediately rejected just so he could feel like he had some level of control over his own bloody life. After much wheedling, it was agreed he’d go for a meeting with Hogwarts’ current headmaster a week into June – almost two months away.

From there, the days passed at the sort of spit-spurt speed that came only with springtime. Uncelebrated, Eussemönat came and passed; the end of April quickly shot into view, then ran off again. Just as the calendar proclaimed it May, his mother seemed to suddenly understand that, with all her cajoling, she’d basically ordered her only son to leave home – and therefore _her_.

      “And for another country, no less!” she would bemoan at various intervals.

His mother now often spent long periods of time chastising herself at the breakfast table, over cups of earl grey that must’ve grown as chilly as the… (no – best not to think about _that_.) Still, the woman did tend to go on at herself whenever these moods took her; he thought she spent too much time alone in her youth.

As an aside to Dorea’s sudden regret over his imminent departure, came a hurricane of neurotic activity.

Already, the witch had forced Harry into a consultation with their tailor, insisting he have a whole new wardrobe – right down to underthings, for Circe’s sake! – charmed up, disregarding his vehement protest there was little wrong with what he already had. Her – severe and serious – response to these frustrated complaints was that if Harry were to be seen in polite society as a Black and a Potter, he had to _look the part_. He’d been hard-pressed to argue with that, given her conviction when it came to such social niceties, and ended up suffering through the three-hour-long fitting in silence, for the most part.

On the 4th, she dragged he and Effie into Paris–

   “ _I’m not supposed to leave the grounds, Mami, you **know** that,” _ he had said in protest to the trip. _“The Ministry’ll pitch a fit if they know I’m there.”_

   “ _Oh pish-posh,”_ she shot back. _“What they are not aware of shall hurt them none.”_

   He scoffed disagreeably. The sheer number of times a secret, or lack of verified intelligence, got Harry in a heap of trouble was astronomical.

   “ _That’s **really** not how it works…” _

                                                                                                  –to make him pick out – at wandpoint, actually – fresh equipment ‘suited to his new position’.

So now his study was overrun with junk: tottering stacks of glass tubs, piles of phials, countless jars and bottles in every size and tint the shopkeeper stocked; two new sets of scales; and cauldrons wrought of more different materials and in more diameters than Harry was ever likely to need… Then, there was the new silver telescope sat in an upstairs hallway (purchased because: _“Certain ingredients can only be picked when the Nile Star is in conjunction with Mars, dear.”_ ) and a disturbing multitude of outdoor knives littered the bottom of his armoire… Presumably, they were to help him in the aforementioned ingredient collection; you could never tell with Dorea – she _was_ a Black, after all.

Despite having all this rubbish, Harry was now stuck mulishly watching a shopkeeper wrap his mother’s most purchase (half a dozen empty journals for him to ‘record his research’). Tucking the stack of journals into her bag – presumably expanded – Dorea turned to him and insisted they pay a visit to the trunk shop next door, where he could get a new, top-of-the-range model.

At this point, Harry had to put his foot down. He was rather attached to the trunk he had, thank-you-very-much; he bought it when he was fifteen and it had been a steadfast companion ever since, coming with him on the darkest of journeys that even magical comrades hadn’t fancied. Even where people came and went, proving and disproving their loyalty over time, that trunk never let him down in spite of his often poor treatment of it.

Effie’s hand tightly enclosed in one of his own, he said, _“No,”_ trying to make himself very clear. “Absolutely _nothing_ could make me get rid of it. Don’t you think I’ve got everything I need already?”

Plus a lot more besides, thanks to his mother’s nervous shopping habit. Lucky that, as Third of the Thirteen, the Potters were well-set money wise.

“But Harreee,” the little girl beside him cried, looking up at him adoringly, “you should have the best of the best of– of _everything_!”

Dorea, appearing extremely put out by the irritation he exuded, glanced down at her five-year-old daughter.

“Quite right, dear one,” she agreed sagely. “Only the best for Harry.”

Harry did _not_ appreciate his mother’s attempts to have his, admittedly completely adorable, younger sister bully him into buying a new trunk. Time for a spot of gentle reëducation.

“Sometimes, what you already have is more than enough,” he told Effie, trying to come off wise while shooting his mother a scathing look over the little girl’s head. “Waste not, want not,” he abridged for good measure.

Dorea clucked her tongue and narrowed her eyes. The woman was fierce and compassionate, powerful and ever so helpful… but ascetic she was not. Even in the case of soon-to-be-disowned squibs, the Black family took care of its own while it had them – his mother was spoilt.

For Harry, first arriving at Hogwarts with Dudley’s ratty hand-me-downs on his back, never having had three square meals or toys of his own, the wasteful habits of the richest purebloods were abhorrent. Families like Ron’s struggled to get by on the Ministry’s stingy pay-scheme, while tossers like the Malfoy’s could easily chuck away a couple of thousand galleons to buy their son’s way onto the Slytherin Quidditch Team. The divide between richest and poorest was too broad here… Worse than he saw growing up in Surrey, anyway.

Dorea’s stiffness made her displeasure clear. Guess she really wanted him to upgrade his perfectly good trunk to some stupid model with ten compartments – one of those being a small room with all the atmosphere of a Nurmengard cell – like his father had.

She wisely held her tongue on the matter, though. Soon, in fact, she was forced to cave to his blanket plea of _no more…_ but only after he threatened to take himself back to the Château and lock himself in his study for the next week; she knew he was serious, seeing as he had a tendency to do that anyway since getting back to France the December previous. He was so regularly woken in the night by unpleasant dreams, it wasn’t an uncommon occurrence for Harry to be sequestered in his study through the wee hours.

He might’ve been in the past for more than half a decade, but he’d never spend all that much time in Château de Potiers until finally permitted to rejoin his family five months prior. He _had_ visited this particular Potter home before, as his mother preferred it to the ones in the Isles – hard to blame her, seeing as Islen Wizarding Society was a clusterfuck nobody should have to put up with. But yes, he spent a little while here his first year in the past. It was a prison, now, but then it had been _escape_. How times changed.

In his early years in this time, he mainly resided at the mansion in Godric’s Hollow, the location chosen for the tutoring lessons Jameson insisted he take to keep up with his studies, despite not being allowed to Hogwarts. After a disaster that occurred just shy of a year since his arrival, that tutoring – and need to be imprisoned at the Hollow – ended. It was at this point, Dorea and Charlus whisked him off to Château de Potiers for fresh air and funky cheese.

His respite here was for but one summer. Soon enough, he undertook magical studies at the then-unfamiliar school L’Acadèmie de Koschey des arts magique, returning not to France each summer but various Potter-owned holiday homes around the Russias. By then, the war had gotten hot and bloody enough to make travel perilous; the Potter’s thought something would happen to him en-route from school to the Château.

Five months ago, the room he decided to claim as his study was largely empty, containing nothing more than a desk, sparsely filled bookshelves, a chair and an ornate dragonfly lamp (the last of which he assumed to be some gift Dorea disliked, so immediately stuffed out of sight in an unused room). Now, though, the place was a tip. Petunia would have had a stroke.

Harry dumped his latest load of rubbish in the same corner he’d abandoned everything else – he needed to go through it all at some point. Right now, he was emotionally exhausted by the trials Dorea was putting him through. She meant well but he needed space. Being dragged up by the Dursley’s meant he wasn’t a social person by nature.

He hated being coddled – already he understood being around his family was doing nothing to ground his _ailment_ in the way Healer Ilyich suggested. Hogwarts really might be of more benefit, there – she, at least, could tell when best to let live rather than coddle. And couldn’t talk. Or pester. There were major benefits to having a mother figure made of magic and brick.

In the middle of the night, he couldn’t help but think that the best thing for his health would be to go back to his own time, reconnect with his first friends… That ship had sunk long ago – it had been made of matchsticks and candlewax. He spent _years_ trying to work out how to go back… forwards… whatever – tenses got confusing when you time-travelled.

Best not to think about it.

This part of the manor, where he had his study, was, other than the solarium, the newest part of the house. The westernmost wing of Château Potiers had been the domain of many a devoted, pioneering (read: obsessed and crazy) Potter over the years:

It was where Gerand Potter carved the first Willow Whisk broomstick. In ‘59, the man plunged to his death from a descendent of that broom, tossed from it by violent winds at the Cheltenham Marathon, which, inadvisably, went ahead despite the hurricane.

Forty years before Gerand’s unfortunate demise at the hands of the life-elimination committee, the broomsmith’s mother – Antonice Malafee – was the first and only woman to successfully bottle attractiveness. Many suggested she was quite plain herself, though all portraits showed a buxom, enthrallingly effulgent woman with glimmering silver eyes.

Even before this wing of the house was constructed, it was important to the family. Built on top of a seventeenth-century oathstone, twenty feet below him was the spot on which the exiled last daughter of the ill-fated Peverell line arrived in France; it was where she secured a line-oath from the Potters, assuring they wouldn’t tell anyone she entered their family and would let the name Peverell die out. Who knew how strong that oath held – he’d never tried telling anyone about her, after all. No reason to.

Now, three hundred years since Cade Peverell’s death, it was here he tried to find – if not use – a way to return himself to the future. It all hinged on one thing – portkey creation.

Fiendishly tricky and as frustratingly dead-end as a Knockturn trick alley, the pursuit of inventing a new form of magical travel was enough to make anyone give up on life. Like Norman White and his disastrous attempts to set up a complex system of magical portals (nobody was quite sure _where_ that man stranded himself in the end), Harry had hit a great big roadblock with the project – years ago, actually. The whole point of the project was to better understand the circumstances of his arrival in the past, so he could work backwards from there and figure out how to return to the ‘present’. Except it wasn’t that simple. For a long time, he ignored the task entirely, especially during the latter, chaotic days of the war when he was too caught up in everything to find a moment's rest. It ceased to matter.

Upon his release from Nurmengard and subsequent removal to the family’s summer – and, more recently, permanent – dwelling here in France, he buried himself back beneath the mounds of parchment, ink bottles and broken quills that epitomised the state of his dorm at Koschey back in the height of his mania. He wasn’t working on this because he was particularly desperate to ‘go home’; not anymore, because he’d been in the past so long, was so rooted here, he didn’t think he’d ever bring himself to leave. No, he was working on this again because nothing distracted him quite like a good arithmantic puzzle – mainly because he was cack at them.

All those months ago, returned from prison a haunted shell of his former self, inflicted with a decidedly apathetic, fuck-it-that’ll-do level of Melancholy – not that he was much better now – he desperately needed something to take his mind off the sepulchral memories of grey stone trapping him, of that hell-melting drip-drip-dripping… the blood of allies, weeping down the cell walls…

Why did he keep dwelling on it?

Probably because, on a subconscious level, taking Dumbledore’s advice didn’t sit well. Forget living – dreams were where it was at…

Thinking on it, surrounding himself with the sense-memory of Nurmengard, was almost as bad as _being_ there. Thoughts of that awful place relished the chance to creep down his spine and twist across his throat, cutting him off from whatever should be bright and good and worth a damn in this life. It made the world an abhorrent place.

Yes – distraction.

                                     He needed distraction.

Kicking the desk halfheartedly, he began pushing aside the detritus of papers and caesious pebbles, several of the latter glowing from within with fey light. Harry silently resigned himself to the task of categorising some of old, loose notes as either helpful or useless, before facing the daunting task of transcribing both sets into the corresponding journals he kept. A helpful process, if tedious.

Keeping hold of calculations and dimwitted hypothesis, which had lead to past failures, helped prevent him making the same errors again and again – on the project, at least. Before landing on this system, he often fell into the same crevasses of idiocy time and time again. His first real breakthrough with the portkeys didn’t come until after spending eighteen-odd months on cyclic flop after flop – probably would’ve reached that point sooner if he wasn’t an imbecile when it came to organised archiving. And gods… how smug would Hermione be to hear him admit that?

For the next few days, Harry only left the study to eat and sleep. Sometimes not even then. The solitude was a balm… or might’ve been if he weren’t so very tired and uncaring of everything.

Poor Sirius.

No wonder his godfather was so rusty and unhinged after years of the Azkaban gloom. _He_ , at least, had had a mission to drive him; all Harry had going for him was this stupid, impossible portkey thing and a big bag of piss all else.

He should probably be getting together the junk for Hogwarts but… didn’t seem worth it, right now. Nothing ever really seemed worth it and, by the time May eighteenth rolled up, a week had gone by since the super-spiffy day trip to Paris.

The skies were clear and the wind cool and crisp, rushing over both he and the, regretfully basic, broom as he span and dove, bouncing upwards again on air currents normally only birds knew.

Mouth twisted into something resembling a grin, though barely human enough to pass for one, Harry took his broom upside down, displaying the now-infamous Potter Ploy, which involved positioning oneself in just the right way that the broomstick, still parallel to the ground, would fall right out the air, distracting the opposing team by making them think the player was plummeting to his death. The move was for beaters or seekers, tending to have the effect of allowing your chasers to score repeatedly while everyone was too busy watching your impending demise.

Not that Effie needed to learn such a move at this point, seeing as she was down on the grass, staring up, fingers wrapped tight around a training broom incapable of going more than seven feet off the ground. The silly move really was for his own pleasure.

His sister whooped and hovered on her toes as his broom, tail-down, manoeuvered to hold itself perpendicular to the fast-approaching ground. Three feet before the longest tail twigs would have hit the tallest of buttercups at near-terminal velocity, his whole broom juddered to a halt. Effie laughed sunnily, clapping her hands together with peals of delighted giggles.

“Show me how, show me how!” she squealed, rushing forward to try and clamber onto Harry’s back.

Still vertical, the extra weight to the broom caused its handle to overtip towards his face; the whole thing span back over itself and he barely managed to twist in time to avoid crushing Effie beneath his weight. He hit the ground hard. Flat on his stomach next to the girl, he let out a winded _oomph_.

“Lesson one – pay attention to basic laws of balance and gravity,” he said unintelligibly into a mouthful of grass. Lifting his head and spitting out the lawn, he added, “Then ignore them, ‘cause broomsticks shouldn’t fly anyway.”

“Why not?” Effie asked, wearing a thoughtful frown.

Harry sighed. Wizards had no concept of what reality was to those without magic.

“Never mind it,” he told his sister, knowing trying to explain would be a bad job. “Right – you ready to get in the air?”

Once she’d slipped off the end of her broom twice in her enthusiasm, Harry spent a while showing her how to steer properly and brake without launching herself clear into the air. Not long after, he was setting up a small area ward and a special enchantment that created illusionary practice snitches for her to catch, which was sometimes used by those who didn’t have enough money to spend on snitches that would probably end up lost anyway.

Effie took the art of flight like vila to fire, making even her amateur moves appear seamless and effortless, easy as breathing. After no more than fifteen minutes, he realised she barely needed his direction at all in order to stay in the air, so ploughed on and began showing her some of the more basic seeker and chaser plays that her safety-broom was capable of making.

They flew past noon, the bright sun casting their darting shadows large over the grass. Through the glare, Harry noticed his mother watching out of a window; he couldn’t see her expression but could guess at it – Dorea did not like heights. So he was surprised when, a few minutes later, she appeared on the ground below them.

With a gentle nudge, his much-adored Firebolt headed downwards and he landed softly on the grass.

“You here to fly?” Harry asked his mother, faintly amused by the prospect. “I can have another broom down here in a jiffy, if you want to gi–”

“No,” his mother cut off, lips downturned and eyes glued to Effie’s swooping form. “I was just down here to inform you I need to go to Limehil. I daresay the Longbottoms will need all the help they can get in the coming weeks.”

“The Longbottoms… Whatever for?” he asked nonplussed. “They’re not to cede from Lindendell, surely?”

And wouldn’t that be a hell-woven basket? It wasn’t normal for a Vassel of the Thirteen to desert it’s Great House. It didn’t seem like the Longbottoms’ style, either.

“Have you not heard?”

“What? What is it?”

Uncouthly, Dorea hastily tossed her newspaper at him; he dropped his broom in order to avoid a faceful of the thing. He flipped the folded paper over, finding the headline _‘Werewolves wreck the Great House of Lindendell’,_ subheaded _‘No survivors; First Vassal, the House of Longbottom, to ascend to the Thirteen.”_

Words escaped him.

“It happened two days ago…” him mother said tremulously, agitation successfully concealed in her face but not her voice. “Cousin Callidora’s sent me a letter, asking me to help her execute the will. She and Harfang want this awful mess smoothed out as quickly as possible – times are too tumultuous for the Thirteen to weather this sort of instability.”

“Harfang, not Aegir?” Harry asked curiously, scanning the article on the attack.

“Lord Aegir is no longer with us. He died in defence of the Lindendell’s youngest daughter.”

“And she didn’t even make it…” he noted sadly, finishing with the news story, mind turning to children he himself had failed to save.

“That’s just it, Harry,” Dorea said with a tight shake of her head and stress-pinched eyes, “she’s still alive.”

“Then why–”

                          “She's been bit.”

“ _So?_ What does that matter? It’s not like she’s dead or anything… Why doesn’t this say that?”

“The Islen Ministry’s covering it up. They’ve passed an emergency law restricting the movements and rights of werewolves. As side effect, Camilia can’t inherit her own properties and titles.”

“You’ve got to be kidding?” Harry exclaimed, outraged on the girl’s behalf. “She’s only a child! The Horn of Bran’s hers by right – nobody should be able to take that away from her… Not even the Ministry… And… what are the Longbottoms doing?”

“Their hands are tied. They have to claim right as a Great House if they want to avoid the public backlash from taking Camilia Lindendell – now a werewolf, when a noble family has just been wiped out by some – as ward. As I said, Callidora wants this mess cleared up soon as possible.” His mother sighed shakily, sounding like the whole world was pressing in around her, stifling her breath. “This is simply a terrible tragedy.”

Numbly, he nodded in agreement. They stood in a swell of silence for a few minutes, watching Effie perform some pretty spectacular – for a five-year-old – loop-de-loops a few feet above.

“I suppose you need me to apparate you?” Harry asked eventually, tearing his eyes off his sister.

“If you would be so kind,” she requested gracefully. Hair shiting patchily from honey blonde to a nauseous _green_ ish-blonde, she said, “I’m not overly fond of flying.”

Just then, amid a gale of gasping giggles, Effie landed running in front of them.

“Harry!” she cried, brushing her riotous, windswept curls out her eyes, “You’re meant to fly _with_ me. Have you seen what I can do, Mami?”

Still looking ill, Dorea nodded mutely.

“I’m going to be the best seeker ever!” Effie insisted loudly, spinning in circles with her broom still held tight between her legs and her arms outstretched. “No – I’m going to be a snitch! I’m a snidget, Mami!”

Then she raced away again, kicking off into the air with more expertise than a flyer of less than a day ought to be able to. Seems that, in this department, natural talent really did run in the family. Harry himself had been good on a broom straight out the box, too.

With a fond smile up at the agile form his sister cut through the air, Harry said, “Guess I better get back to it. Before she accidentally turns herself into a snidget.”

He’d never seen accidental magic cause the animagus transformation before, true, but there was a first time for everything. Unintentional apparation, at least, was entirely possible.

 

 

 

 **Regular day trips to the Isles (to help deal with the Lindendell estate) meant Dorea didn’t have the usual amount of time to devote to buying him every last thing he might ever need.** Instead, she now settled for pouring all her excess energy into convincing him to join her in various family-oriented activities when she _was_ around. He guessed she just wanted to _see_ him again… but all he could think of is the Durlseys going on trips to the movies, the zoo… the surgeon to ‘get that ruddy tail removed’.

On the twenty-eighth of the month, as the weather was fine, she declared she wanted him to help her and Effie prepare a nice alfresco dinner for them; no matter that his mother was hardly a skilled cook, having been raised in a culture where the norm was to have a house elf or three. She shooed him out the study churlishly, tutting over the state of the room, and down the stairs.

“We don’t spend enough real time together, Harry,” she complained. “Soon you will be gone and I shall remain, a foolish old witch with nothing but her birds for company–”

      “What’s Effie – dragon liver?”

                                                         “–and the little one is going to miss you so very much! She spoke of nothing else when I tucked her in last night. She’s quite upset about it all, as a matter of fact – I was hoping you could have a word with her?”

He could hide in the study again, sure, but withdrawal helped none. The only viable way to placate a frantic witch – especially if that witch was his mother – was to give into her demands. This is how Harry ended up agreeing to, once showered and changed, spending an entire, uninterrupted day with the two ladies in his life, and to having a chat with his sister to find out what was on her mind.

So, in a muggle-free area of the luscious French countryside, the three Potters wasted May Day strolling down the desire-lines crisscrossing their demesne like shallow cuts in a chopping board. He endured his mother’s incessant chit-chat, glad the warmth of spring seemed to be thawing her recent forcefulness a little. Effie ran on ahead, jumping through the meads and curiously prodding any wildlife that failed to get away fast enough.

With gentle buffers now and then, Harry steered his mother’s conversation away from the topics she actually considered important, mainly directing her onto safer things they were both disinterested in, like the weather and the chances various French quidditch teams had of making a go of it in the newly-reinstated International Quidditch League.

So close to the place Colina finally expired, the sun wasn’t enough to warm his skin or still the rolling shiver that pressed up and down his spine, making his neck twitch. Just over the ridge to their east – blown away, carved out chalk just barely exposing bones of ancient gneiss beneath – stood the boggy, clay mire of the site of the Battle of Potier’s Field, which took place over a year previous. The elves hadn’t yet dared to relandscape the area; Harry couldn’t really blame them, with the way it constantly felt like the rot of Colina’s necromantic abominations was going to rise up out of the wetlands and feast on the living. Needless to say, when Effie strayed too close to the still decaying grass of the battle site, they called her back sharply.

Eventually, following a picnic as far from the battle site as reasonably achievable, their wanderings took the Potters into Poitiers proper. Good food and sunlight were nowhere near enough to truly cheer him, but he was grateful to feel a brief tug of warmth in his chest when his little sister brought him a frog–

              “Look what I caught, Harry!” she cried gleefully, handing him the squirming creature, twisting and turning in his hands in the search for freedom.

                                                         –and, by the time they got into town, he was as close to relaxed as it was really possible for him to get. This is to say, he was only _mildly stiff_ , most of the tenseness now related to the risk of some do-gooding wizard deciding to report Harry to the Ministry for breaking his house arrest… again. Mercifully, the people of Potiers were extremely fond of their local pseudo-lords; it was unlikely anyone who knew them, would betray their trust to gain the favour of a Ministry who already failed to protect them.

Their party of three slipped in and out of various stores, dutifully completing Dorea’s current mission of _grocery shopping_. Seeing as the house elves were more than happy to take care of all ‘menial’ chores, his mother’s claims that she _always_ prefered to do such things herself, to ‘get out and about and avoid becoming a hermit’, were a poorly-executed lie. The witch only generally went shopping for things such as skincare creams, hats and furnishings, but he chose not to point this out. Her reasoning was poor only because she wanted to spend time with him, which he understood; taking her neuroticism gracefully was about the best thing he could do for her.

To be honest, Dorea _did_ seem to be getting a lot of pleasure out of interacting with those running the local businesses, who made their lives in this town. Harry himself found talking to the residents of Poitiers a rewarding thing, once upon a time, back when he spent a summer visiting the little town regularly; it had been a strange luxury, to live somewhere where the locals didn’t revile him and interacting with them didn’t involve fence-and-alley chases by the local gang.

Now, seeing as the French Ministry and their horde of creepy cats had only permitted Harry back into the country on the – admittedly regularly ignored – agreement he didn’t leave the grounds of Chateau Potiers, he’d not had occasion to come into Poitiers for some time… (since Yuletide forty-three, in fact). It did seem stupid to break his terms of continued habitancy but… one, he’d be leaving for the Isles soon, and two, he was already in Paris this month and nothing bad happened; it seemed normal folk weren’t interested in dogging him in to the Ministry.

It was sort of refreshing to be out of the Chateau, despite his general trouble functioning among real people.

Whenever the three of them came across wizarding children in the streets of Poitiers, they received enthusiastic waves from them, his tiny sister running off to join them in their games up and down the flowery side alleys of magical residential streets. The parents greeted Harry and his mother with warm smiles, not condemnation; some (like Mlle Dubois, who was browsing haircare potions at an upmarket apothecary) actually stopped to chat with them for a full quarter of an hour. M. Leclercq, who owned a chain of highly successful grocers and delicatessens, regaled them with moderately amusing tales of social faux pas his daughter, Oceanette, had committed since her move to the Isles (Harry recalled her as a pretty brunette who recently was engaged to new godfather, Alphard).

Completely worn out by the afternoon, Effie slept curled into his hip on the majority of the three-mile walk home. As such, Dorea was the one laden down with several large shopping bags from Inklets and Fauns (Poitiers’ specialised bookstore and writing supplier), her pannier overflowing with sweet oranges, chicken breast, mascarpone and leeks. The food looked good – shame about what would be happening to it.

By the time they reached the back door of the Chateau – having been forced to take several looping detours through the shifting maze of their gardens, which greatly increased the three-mile journey – Harry felt shattered enough he might just get some sleep tonight.

Harry mercifully avoided having to help his mother ruin the kitchens (a joy he objected to as much as their stuffy head elf, Bea, did). Instead, he sneaked out the drawing room while his mother was drinking tea and Effie snoozed on a chaise; she could hardly call after him if she wanted to avoid waking her daughter. Even Dorea, energetic as she tended to be, wore easily enough she didn’t want to chase a toddler around after a long afternoon of walking the countryside.

Many might find the complete still silence of his study stifling but to Harry it was as close to heaven as anything. He knew he had plenty to do, ready for his upcoming move, so even with no more ideas for his portkey project, he wasn’t idle. Instead of slumping into the chair at his desk upon entry, he set to emptying all his trunks and bags in preparation for proper packing; by the time this was done, his study was cluttered pretty much from floor to ceiling, with just a few square feet to stand and a treacherous path to the door.

Beginning with books, Harry worked on getting them all organised into the specialised bookbag he preferred. Down low in the pile, he found the much-loved copy of _R_ _ú_ _nscail_ that, during his first year in the past, he read over and over again whenever feeling homesick (so, nearly all the time). Scattered all over the carpet below _R_ _ú_ _nscail_ were carved wood, bone and metal sets of runes for portable arrays, a pair of handheld charging blocks sticking dangerously out the debris like tower blocks in a city of bungalows; he quickly summoned the large crate they belonged in (narrowly avoiding collapsing a tower of travel cookware as he did so) and set to sorting through them.

Not long after he finished packing all the new phials and jars into set of stackable boxes he labelled ‘potions stuff’, he found himself jumping as a soft knock sounded at the door.

Odd. Nobody usually bothered him when he was in here. He frowned and turned away from the shelf he was reaching for.

“Come in!” he called, using a highly-modified Sweeping Charm to push aside enough mess the door could open.

His mother stepped into the room, peering around cautiously. Mildly embarrassed by the state of things, he hurried to explain what he was up to. She nodded, surveying the chaos and the half-dozen open trunks and bags lined up against one wall, full of his things.

“It looks like a hurricane tore through! I’ll be having the elves shrink down some furniture for you,” she informed. “You’ll need appropriate storage if you’re taking all this. It’s as if you intend to live at Hogwarts full-time!”

A sinking feeling began in Harry’s stomach, dropping to his navel. She did know he wouldn’t be coming back every weekend, didn’t she? He hoped so… If not, it wasn’t a conversation he fancied having right now.

“Uh, sure – furniture,” he rambled, grabbing a random stack of records off the shelf next to him as a distraction. “Need lots of furniture, shrinked, shranked – _shrunk_. Great idea… Thanks, Mami.”

He quickly spotted his minute record box and began replacing its erstwhile contents.

Ignoring his bluster, Dorea frowned heavily at his hands. “Are you entirely sure packing those is a good idea? They are from the future, after all.”

Harry glanced down at the now-also-miniature record he was sliding into the case where the rest of them were stored. He shrugged.

“They’ve all had the year removed,” he reasoned, just glad she wasn’t asking questions about his long-term living arrangements. “It’s not like most wizards, even in the future, can tell the difference between Keith Floyd and _Pink_ Floyd. It’ll be fine.”

“That’s what you said when Cousin Alphard borrowed them. Now he’s always going on about this strange load of noise the muggles of the future somehow manage to define as ‘music’. Not to mention how that damned contraption of his chopped up the seventh hole fairway on Charlus’ silly golf course.”

Heh – Harry forgot about that. Good days were worth remembering.

Chuckling, he argued, “Hey, the bike’s got nothing to do with me…”

Technically.

“So, it’s not because of the… _gentleman_ on the cover of this one?” his mother asked, holding up a copy of _Bad Attitude_. “Or,” she added, picking up another Meatloaf album, “that his muggle rotary-cycle _flies_ because of this one?”

“Um… Well, you can’t blame it all on me. Alphie’s an adult – it’s not my fault he… uh, _took_ to the idea of the future rather enthusiastically. I don’t even like Meatloaf…” Harry picked up _Coda_ and _Physical Graffiti_ , musing, “You should be thankful he didn’t buy a zeppelin, to be honest. Merlin knows where he’d keep it.”

His mother _hmmm_ ed as he slipped the last pile of records into their box, lobbing the sealed object into his carpet-bag with a _thunk_.

“How goes things at Limehill? You need to go back today?”

If she did, she might give up on the dinner idea. He’d have to look after Effie, sure, but better that than… ‘dinner’.

Unfortunately for him, Dorea shook her head negative.

“I’ve done all I can, for now,” she said. You father’s flying back from French Saigon for the ascension ceremony, but you don’t actually have to come. I know you’d rather not. With any luck, he’ll run into some of the Visionaire stragglers on his way and wind up minced… We can always hope.”

Apparently, Dorea wasn’t feeling very tolerant this evening.

“Can’t disagree with the sentiment, but I’m pretty sure that I’d _have_ to go to the ascension, then.”

His mother made a stunted noise of agreement low in her throat, then said, “The Lindendells’ superfluous possessions – those meaning nothing to Camilia – are to be sold off at auction, as per their will. Harfang’s making sure she will get all the things that matter. They’ve not even moved into the manse at Linden Dell – it will go to Camilia as soon as she turns seventeen.”

Eyes running over the charred pieces of a bow Charlie Weasley gave him for his fourteenth birthday, Harry nodded absently and murmured, “That’s good, then.”

No point taking the bow, really. It was broken. No point at all.

Mind running back over what Dorea had said, he couldn’t help but wonder, not for the first time, why he was never given access to Chateau Potiers when he was still in the future. By all accounts, as the last Potter the house had belonged to him, and anything – even, he thought humourlessly, the wrecked shell of the Hollow – would’ve been bliss in comparison to the Dursleys.

“The sale’s set for July,” Dorea said shortly, breaking his train of thought. “I’ll need you to pick me up.”

“You’re going, then?”

“Oh yes,” she agreed, taking the bow from him and putting it atop the nearest bookshelf. “The Lindendells are family as much as any of the Thirteen – we wouldn’t want their treasures going to any old deep-pocketed fiends, would we? Besides, everyone who’s anyone is going – it would be embarrassing if a woman of my stature didn’t attend.

“Now, come along. Dinner’s going to be delicious, you know.”

Grimacing, Harry didn’t dare disagree; privately, he rather thought he’d prefer to take his chances with Hagrid’s month old rock cakes, mouldy and covered in Fang-drool. His mother was a connoisseur of good food, not a creator of it.

After he had slogged his way through a starter involving mildly-singed asparagus and a main that, to be honest, would probably have tasted better if burnt, Harry found himself tucking into too-stodgy, cold souffle with cream. In the silence between them, broken only by the clink of cutlery and some aggrieved rumblings from his stomach, the sky had darkened to a rich midnight blue. Lit only by the yellow glow of candles, the dessert looked almost passable.

“You’ve been avoiding the question,” Dorea shot very directly, innocently motioning him to refill her wine glass.

Annoyed, he fiddled with the label on the wine. Prevaricating for just one blissful second longer, he decided to play dumb.

“Oh? Which question would that be?”

“Why do you have such a problem with Dumbledore?”

Urgh, not again. This conversation had played out far too many times in the last month or so.

Spotting his expression, his mother laughed.

“No, no,” she said, eyes more serious than voice, as he tried to waive her off, “don’t give me all that ‘dichotomous politics’ malarky. What’s the _real_ reason you worry over him?”

Harry hedged his bets, batting back, “Other than the fact he’s a bit of an interfering old git? Or, rather, old _goat._ Have you heard the wonderful story about Aberforth and his now-confiscated farm animals?” he asked humorously, trying to get her wrapped up in tales of woe involving Dumbledore’s brother and his inappropriate charm upon and, um… _enchanting_ of goats.

She was having none of it.

“Fine. Frankly,” he acquiesced to her inquisition, “I think I hate him.”

A cold tone seeped into his words as he regressed towards the person he’d become in the worst days of the war. His voice sharpened viciously and filled with depreciation as he spoke on, lip curling ever so slightly.

“I can’t help it,” he explained. “All that glory for one fight. He didn’t really help us in the war… Grindelwald was knocking on the sod’s front door with a giant _flamortium_ -bedecked battering ram, by the time he took notice. When I was a kid, I looked up to him… I don’t know – perhaps he grew wiser in his old age, but right now, all I see is a guy who’s weakening the wizarding world. Well, in the Isles, at least.

“I hate that… because my relatives were such tight-lipped ba-- uh, a _barely pleasant_ bunch, all I know about my birth-parents came straight from Dumbledore, or from his close _friends_ – for want of a better word, there. I mean, how much of it was true and how much was fantasy? I know I got a bit of a biased intro to our world, but _how much_ should I doubt?”

Harry let the sentence hang in the air between them.

“And, most of all, I hate knowing going to Hogwarts means he’ll end up trying to draw me into some Greater Good scheme to bugger up things for students with dark magic. He’ll want to use me to get bills pushed through that give more and more rights to _his_ allies, taking them away from people like _us_. And you _know_ Charlus’ll want me to take our Wizengamot seats if I’m going to be in the Isles – he already barely has time for it.”

Dorea put down her narrow dessert spoon roughly, letting it clatter noisily into the saucer below her bowl. The look on her face was scandalised.

“’The Greater Good’?” she asked, the pitch of her voice oddly high. “Lord Dumbledore isn’t Grindelwald – for heaven's sake, he defeated the man! What insanity left you the impression he’s _anything_ like that awful man?”

“Insanity? It’s crazy, I guess, if you only see things one way,” Harry defended in as level a voice as he could muster.

He loved his mother very much but the years of separation from her Slytherin family had blinkered her some to the true horrors and motivation of the world.

“He never told me why I was targeted by the Dark Lord. I was forced to kill a man when I was _eleven_ , and still he wouldn’t say when I asked _why me_ , why _my_ family. I was old enough to murder but not to know the truth.

“I’m sure he knew,” Harry muttered, still aggrieved by what had passed so long ago. “He must’ve done. He said I was ‘too young’ to deal with it, not that he didn’t know.”

“Is it wrong to protect a child?” his mother asked.

“I’m not sure I’ve ever been a child… Besides, you say Dumbledore’s nothing like the Good Lord, but they were friends, weren’t they? If half the things that come out of old Batty’s mouth when she’s had a few to many – so, all the time – are true… They were mighty chummy when they were young. Close personal friends,” Harry laughed bitterly. “She ought to know, seeing as she’s Grindelwald’s aunt. They all lived in Godric’s Hill and… I knew Dumbledore for three years and he never mentioned it, living on our Islen holdings. He must’ve known my parents well but he never said anything about it… Other than that I’ve my mother’s eyes.”

Dorea looked at him with something like pity. Beside that useless emotion, there was a certain shrewdness that tended to appear only when she had some great revelation.

Gently, she asked, “You’ve been holding this in for a long time, haven’t you?”

A small flicker of hurt crossed her dark eyes.

“It’s not that,” he sighed, treading carefully to avoid damaging her feelings further. “Well, it’s certainly not that I feel cheated by you, Mami. You’re the only mother I’ve ever known – I love you more than I can say. It’s just--” he thought carefully before going on “--Dumbledore never _knew_ I’d get a happy… uh, happy _ish_ – Charlus is bit of a gudgeon, but you know what I mean.

“Uh, what was I saying? Oh, yeah, Dumbledore didn’t know I’d get a happy family in the forties – pretty long shot, that. When I knew him, I was just a kid who’d never known his parents, and he held everything he knew about them to his chest.

“And I don’t know _why_. I don’t think I ever will. I don’t think I’ll ever see that future again.”

“You think the past you knew is changed?”

He shrugged, previous discomposure fading faster than the setting sun of Alban winters.

“I can’t really be sure, honestly. I never paid much attention in History of Magic at Hogwarts – taught by a ghost that could only do monotone, you know? I missed any of the specifics about the war with Grindelwald, except the year he was defeated and by who. Uh… I learned a bit about the World War at muggle primary, but not enough to be any cop changing things.

“It’s hard to wrap my head round. If you think about it, perhaps I was _supposed_ to be here – in the past.” He put one hand under his chin, pondering the paradox that had plagued him for years. “Being here might not’ve changed anything if all this already happened – exactly as it is now – in the future I came from.”

Harry fiddled with his glass, frustrated with the near-ineffability of what he meant.

He finally settled for saying, “I don’t know. Perhaps this _always_ happened. Perhaps you and Charlus always had a first son named Hadrian, decades before my father was born, but I just didn’t _know_ about it.

“Not like I ever looked up my family tree or paid attention in history. Maybe, because I’m unaware of how things’re ‘meant’ to be, I can… act however I want – maybe even change things that _did_ happen because I don’t _know_ they happened. I– I…”

Huffing, Harry gave the concept up as a bad job, not wanting to go to bed with a headache looming. The nightmares were enough without adding to them.

“You think it’s the opposite of self-fulfilling prophecy, I believe,” Dorea chirped, face twisted in such a way that it seemed she was also trying to think around the paradox he described. “Mother taught me knowing the wording of a prophecy could lock you into a chain of events, ending in its fulfilment. But… well, if you don’t _know…_ the prophecy can be defied.”

She smiled, seeming to have bettered her own understanding of the scenario. “Is that what you speak of?”

Of their own accord, his eyebrows puckered in the middle as a feeling of bewildered resignation passed through him.

Instead of thinking further on the difficult subject, he said, “Yeah, something like that. Boris would’ve been able to explain it better.”

Dorea just laughed at his expression, not acknowledging the house elf that popped in and stealthily began clearing the table.

“From what I recall,” she stated blithely, “your friend Boris is far too lost in his own riddles to explain anything noetically. You did just fine on your own.”

Truth be, Boris was perfectly straightforward and lucid if he liked you. His facade of inherent weirdness was a byproduct of too many undesirable people coming up to him with demands that he tell them their futures. If Harry had that problem, he would’ve just told everyone who asked that they were going to meet a sticky end, a la Trelawney; by some quirk, Boris didn’t seem to be able to refuse his questioners, so he just spoke in circles until their brains resembled onion soup.

As Harry changed for bed, preparing himself for yet another night of disturbed sleep, he wondered if he was just a whiny, bitter bastard with an unwarranted chip over Dumbledore (who hadn’t really _done_ anything to him… _yet_ ). It was probably because the old man didn’t dare stick his neck on the line for years, then easily wiped the board with the Good Lord on a whim and claimed countless cries of glory across the world. The man was adored for what he did in one afternoon’s work, while Harry was reviled for saving the people of Paris at great personal cost.

Why did he ever bother?

He knew why, of course. He just didn’t know when to leave well enough alone.

 

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

_posted: 2017-10-05_  
_edits: none_

  

**"Where'd ya get it, Tommy?** Kids like us don' get nice fings like that!"

Tom stood stiffly, clutching the simple black journal to his chest. "The shop lady gave it to me... said it was one of the last and..." and that a nice little boy like him deserved to have something of his own... something nobody else had owned, a place to be himself and not _nothing_ , like everyone else thought he was.

" _Gave_ it to yuh? Sure she did," Amy said, tone turned sour and patronising. "People just  _give_ their nice fings to nasty little rats like you _all the time_."

Billy smirked, a wide slash of red and teeth across his heavily freckled face. "Be' it was a five-fingered discount, yeah! Yuh'v got sticky little fingers, don'tcha Tommy-boy... all sorts of fings yuh ain't meant to have find their way to yuh, don' they?"

Resisting the urge to fold himself in half and prepare to weather a beating, Tom stood his ground. "I didn't nick it. She's nice, she really gave it to me," he insisted. "Look, she had my name put on it and everything."

The older boy reached forwards and, quicker than Tom expected, ripped the book out his grip.

"Would yuh 'ave a butchers a' that, Ames, it really  _does_  'ave 'is name on it. Awww... you wan't old spinster Wilkes for yer new mummy, Tom? Yeah, she gonna be yuh mummy? Neat... I mean, she's what, only an 'undred, right?"

"You– you're just jealous!" Tom shouted, making a lunge for his new journal. 

Billy scoffed, holding the book above his head at arm's length, just out of Tom's reach. Amy shrieked with laughter.

"Jealous... Sure, jealous of  _you_ , Tom, 'cause yer so bright an' clever and everybody just  _loves_ yuh... Arks anyone – we all wanna be _Tom_..." the boy said sarcastically. "What's no' to be jealous of? 'ere, take yer dumb book," he ordered, tossing it in Tom's general direction, "worfless bi' of shit anyway..."

Tom glared after Billy and Amy as they went inside, out of the frigid winter air. Angrily, he looked down at Miss Wilkes' present, splayed pages face-down in the mud; when he picked it up, it was smeared and stained, bits of grass and muck damp over at least half the pages. It really  _was_ useless now – ruined. He should get rid of it.

_No point keeping a broken book..._

But he never did.

 

                       _\--encounter between Tom Riddle, Billy Stubbs and Amy Benson, the long winter, 1933_

 

 

 

_may _  
the white admiral

 

 

 **THE TRAIN WAS A hot metal tube overpopulated with gossiping women, poor lighting and a swirling smog of cigarette smoke. **Tom did not precisely appear out of place amongst the army of black-booted businessmen travelling on it, nor between the comely young women they pandered to, despite currently feeling worlds apart. A couple of red-lipped, pink-cheeked It Girls sitting on the other side of the aisle gave him doe eyes; he threw them a begrudging wink, lighting a cigarette and stowing the matches away in the breast of his jacket. It would not do to forget his charm, after all.

Beyond the rocking click-a-clack of the train running over rusting rails, Tom fancied he could feel the low hum of electricity stuttering through the carriage. It rested below the voices and smoke, crooning him into a jolty half-asleep state as he stared uninterestedly out the window. Beyond, fields snapped past, the homes of sheep and wheat and rye, with the odd town punctuating the vast countryside.

Muggle travel was dull. Tedious enough, in fact, to lull even the most brilliant of minds into a state of absolute languor.

Tom was quite certain his loathing for Mr Borgin and the man’s stupid errands could be matched by no other in his life; the loathing persisted despite his employer’s shop being a veritable dragon-horde of unusual, priceless, historical and/or one-of-a-kind artefacts. Were it not for this small benefit of Borgin’s continued existence (and that he was a well-known face in the Knockturn community), Tom was sure he would have stepped across the corpse of his own disgust of death just to take the man between the ribs with one of those ensorceled daggers he so coveted. Borgin was a beast and Burke was blind not to see it.

Somerset. Blasted _Somerset_.

That was where the train was going, Tom going with it.

Apparating to a location one had never before visited was always a tricky business – Tom was not one to leave anything to chance. That the address he slowly headed towards was unplottable anyway, the barest hints of its coördinates slipping from one’s mind no sooner than conceived, only increased the likelihood of splinching sevenfold. A missing nail, a missing eyebrow – these were not things which would affect him in the long run, they could be regrown with a thought. He knew from experience, however, regrowing parts like fingers and ears was far from pleasant. He had been cautious enough to ensure he never had occasion to repeat the treatment he underwent during his second year at Hogwarts; it seemed foolish to break such a good habit over something as trifling as a long train journey.

So it was that, at the ungodly hour of five in the morning, Tom prepared himself for a day trapped in the muggle transport network. He was forced to pick the gaudy pocket of a bourgeois harlot to acquire enough muggle currency to buy a ticket (the pay from his work was in galleons and the goblins were so far out the lem they had not cottoned onto the idea they could charge the public to convert their money), then settled in for a long, uninspiring morning amongst the mundane masses.

That was for hours ago. Tom was now swiftly moving from determined, through stupefied and into completely disheartened. Trains were not slow by any stretch of the imagination but apparation was infinitely faster and more civilised.

After another twenty minutes of monotony, he concluded he really ought to have brought a book along. _Surely_ Borgin could have been persuaded to part with one of those ancient spell-smithing tomes he forced Tom to recatalogue a week prior?

Over the remaining two hours of the journey, right through the refreshments cart trolling past and painful attempts at conversation with him made by various travellers, his thoughts continued in this vein. Tom spent the time carefully putting together a viably executable plan which would allow him to relieve Borgin of several desirable items, all without the man being any the wiser (in fact, his employer would likely even _thank_ him for having done so).

Due to this plotting, it was a modestly reïnvigorated Tom who alighted in Stogumber with sharp eyes and renewed interest in the day’s work.

The station was quite literally in the middle of nowhere. No particular town seemed to surround it, though there was a waiting room, a few cottages nearby and several farm homesteads scattered here and there in the distance.

On the hamlet-side of the small, redbrick reception building, a carriage waited. Though the coach was dark, discreet in colouring, the curtains were a smooth shade of honey and the Smith family crest was engraved into the door. There appeared to be no driver but Tom knew to have one would be no more than a frivolity on the part of Madam Smith – with magic, carriages could be enchanted to steer themselves, or pulled by thestrals which were, all things considered, highly intelligent creatures.

Tom’s walked around to the harnessing to find a pair of stout ponies, confirming his postulations about the carriage’s self-sufficiency. He rubbed a hand down the closest one’s nose, taking note of its keen eyes.

“I suppose you know where to take me?” he murmured, not wanting anyone to overhear him speaking to a _pony_ (not that anybody was nearby _to_ hear him… but all the same…).

The pony pinned him with a stare that said _do I look stupid_ , giving an exasperated huff.

Tom breathed out a laugh. Magical animals were so much brighter than their mundane counterparts and remained, in his opinion, more personable than the average human being. Perhaps he should look into acquiring a pony-drawn carriage himself? Then he would not be forced to continuously take muggle-packed buses and trams all over the city; he was sure there were enchantments that could be employed to ensure his coach remained unseen by mundane eyes…

The idea had merit.

The road was winding and hilly but caused Smith’s ponies no trouble. They ran it faster than beasts of their size really ought to be able to, pulling the rounded carriage through dens and gullies, over a little bridge crossing a stream then, finally, through what remained of the all-magical village of Kingswood.

Tom peered between the curtains, observing the evidence of the attack that had razed Kingswood. There were tumbledown cottages on the outskirts, entwined with invasive magical weeds run wild and spell-carved trenches running alongside them. Further in, on the village’s main road, the dark windows of abandoned shops and homes stared back at him desolately, buildings pocked with craters and only still standing with the aid of magic. The squat village hall was a charred husk, beams splintered, roof caved in and glass melted into fantastic shapes down its crumbling front steps. A giant, rusted cauldron was half-buried to the left of the broken hall and, as the ponies pulled the carriage past the village-proper, Tom saw the main wardstone was cleaved in two.

The whole place was deserted. Tom imagined the villagers – those who survived the initial attack, at least – had long since picked through the wreckage for anything holding use or sentimental value. It would seem nobody had chosen to rebuild, not even those born and raised in Kingswood.

Building in the wizarding world was, contrary to what one would expect with magic on their side, both difficult and costly. It required the coöperation of runesmiths, arithmancers and masters of transfiguration. It was not far fetched to assume the locals lacked the specialists necessary to undertake such an enormous project and could not foot the gold needed to have somebody else do it for them. So they simply all left, allowing the forest to reclaim their homes and businesses.

That was all part of Grindelwald’s plan, most likely. It looked like an example of divide and conquer at its most callous and efficient.

Back when the first attack on a magical Islen settlement occurred (on the hamlet at Wyevale in late forty-four), _the Prophet_ claimed it was as a warning to the Ministry. While it was undoubtedly true Grindelwald had not been satisfied with their government’s stance of non-interference regarding the war on the continent (though it certainly _benefited_ the revolutionary), tom never believed the papers’ supposition the Dark Lord’s attacks occurred for so paltry a reason. It made no sense. That Grindelwald left it so late in the day to attack the Isles in the first place, also failed to match up with his swift and unyielding capture of other nations.

All through his Hogwarts career, Tom followed the bloody trail of Grindelwald’s forces in _Intermagical_. The Visionaire did not officially land on Islen soil until his seventh year. It was the year his high and mighty, oblivious or uncaring, pureblooded classmates finally began to twitch.

The muggle side of the war had raged on for almost a decade by that point and London had been under repeated attack for years. Only the Visionaire’s direct presence in local magical affairs made the rich actually sit up and pay attention to what was happening in the world around them. Back then, Tom was full of vindictive glee as his classmates – the ones from older magical families – finally got to feel what it was like to go to bed terrified you might not make it to morning. All those years he spent sleeping in the orphanage’s basement for fear of the bombs… Now they were experiencing the equivalent.

Wyevale went first, then Nestler’s Minis, Tunbridge Tower and the Old Oak Road hamlet – all of them were in the Harris Duchy. From there, the Visionäire spread north and east, pouring through magical villages like a tsunami until only two remained: Godric’s Hill and Hogsmeade.

Word was, it took the Dark Lord himself to destroy the defences at Godric’s Hill. Having once had occasion to meet the fierce (if inebriated) late Lord Potter, Tom was unsurprised by this. There had been a man where the phrase ‘Over my dead body’ could be taken quite literally (naturally, explaining the lord’s permanent internment in his local cemetery – Grindelwald did not take _no_ for an answer).

Grindelwald’s system of attack was actually brilliant.

While Tom was no advocate for the spilling of magical blood, if _he_ were a Dark Lord trying to bring down a country he would take much the same course: First you took on the ward-bolted, safe little villages and broken them open; you did not slaughter the residents en masse but damaged homes irreparably, forcing people to find somewhere new to live, breaking up communities and scattering them throughout the Muggle World; from there, if the government failed to comply with your demands, remaining magical families were alone and easy targets.

Divide your foes, then pick off stragglers one by one until the rest fell into line. Genius, truly.

Unfortunately for Grindelwald, he bit off more than anyone could chew when it came to Hogsmeade, the best protected (and now _only_ , outside of London) all-magical settlement in the Isles. Obviously, as the only all-magical village remaining, it made sense that the Dark Lord would target it...but even at the behest of basic logic, what actually possessed the man to _try_? It was a mystery. Everybody knew the Hogwarts outer-wards were nasty and all the professors in the castle would come running if they were breached.

Smith’s carriage now lead him around the intact wards separating Kings’ school from the rest of Kingswood Enchanted Forest. Apparently, the establishment did not rate high enough on Grindelwald’s itinerary to warrant a visit from the Visionaire. Tom supposed, seeing as no one actually lived there and that the man’s aims were not to stop young magicals gaining an education, there was no reason to destroy the school.

The forest began to thin past the brief, warm sense of Kings’ wards. The carriage began to slow, the ponies forced to navigate along a narrow, rocky path which led up and out onto the moor.

Crossing the wards of Madam Smith’s estate was like entering the tropics. The grass beyond the carriage’s window was verdant, the trees in bloom.

Once he exited the coach, Tom began to comprehend the reason for the temperature difference between the estate and the moors beyond – it was a weather-sphere. The whole estate was encompassed by a masterpiece of atmospheric charmswork, a massive climate bubble held in place by wards that must cost more money than Tom had seen in his entire life. Hepzibah Smith was living in a magical microclimate – it seemed to replicate the weather in some far-flung place such as the Bahamas or the Black Outlying island ring.

The whole house was an oversized, modern villa.

An elderly house elf showed Tom through a tiled, Mediterranean-style foyer enhanced with large, potted dragon trees and marble sculptures of aquiline hunting cats. Crisp wooden blinds were over all the windows they passed, a warm scent of air-diffused salt flowing through them on the breeze. Completely priceless paintings, statues and other ‘décor’ were absolutely everywhere. No wonder Borging scent him here; Madam Smith’s house was a magical heritage museum – albeit one sitting on the more garish side of ostentatious.

“Mistress,” the house elf announced when they arrived in a white, open parlous, “your guest, Mister Borgin’s representative, has arrived.”

“Oh, thank you Hokey – you are dismissed.”

The elf vanished without a sound, leaving Tom standing in the doorway. Sunlight streamed across the room, lighting on a floating bowl of exotic fruit. Nobody, apart from he himself, seemed to be present – much less Madam Smith.

“So,” the same bodiless, nasal voice that had addressed the house-elf called, “another one of dear Davidos’ recruits, I see. You are the firth he has sent in the last three years. None have persuaded me to part with my treasures… You will not be able to either.”

When Madam Smith revealed herself, turning in her seat, Tom wondered how he managed to miss her.

The fruit bowl was not a fruit bowl. The bowl of pineapples and starfruit was, in fact, the most ridiculous hat he ever had the misfortune to encounter (including that enormous, bejewelled, _arachnoid_ creation of Walburga Black’s, which almost ate Septimus Weasley at the Graduate’s Ball). Below the fruits-of-paradise inspired hat was a wide, over-blushed face, middle-aged and set with protruding brown eyes. The witch’s hair was piled around her shoulders in curls, dyed an unnatural shade of dusky red and falling into her wobbling cleavage.

“Oh...” the witch cooed, looking him up and down. “I see Davidos is more intelligent than he’s given credit for. Nevertheless, my treasures are mine and mine alone.”

Tom stepped forwards confidently, fixing his most graceful smile at his lips and forcing down the instant dislike he felt for the woman. His shoes clacked against the marble floor until they met a geometrically patterned rug laid out between the settees.

“It is simply _wonderful_ to meet you, my lady,” he smarmed, taking the witch’s wrist lightly and trying not to prolong contact longer than absolutely necessary. “I must confess, Mister Borgin told me of the treasures you possess, yet he neglected to mention you were such a treasure _yourself_.”

He hoped she was blushing at his efforts. It was hard to tell through the layers of cosmetics caked across her piggish face.

“ _Well_ ,” Smith said tremulously, withdrawing her wrist and pressing the corresponding hand across her mottled chest, “I never… How charming. Just charming, Mister–“

“ _Riddle_ , my lady. Tom Riddle at your service.”

The witch did not offer him the expected seat, declaring Tom had arrived at just the right moment, for she had, minutes ago, finished her midday tea.

“I would be _more_ than pleased to give you a tour, if this is agreeable, Mister Riddle?”

“It would be more than agreeable, my lady.” He waved one hand smoothly, asking, “Shall we?”

It transpired the entryway to Madam Smith’s villa, the path he trod to her parlour, were the least scattered with artefacts. It was truly saying something, considering he had already seen enough to convince him the house could easily serve as a museum. Tom was sure Smith lead him past what looked like a fourteenth-century soulmaster’s reliquary bolted down in a side room – he barely got a glance at it before they were past the door.

“This,” the witch preened, stopping before a long, yellow-heavy landscape displaying some ancient field of battle, “is the last day of Babel,” she announced. “Imbued with witness accounts, created by Martiné Nazário in seventeen twelve.

“ _Nazário?”_ Tom echoed in shock, examining the browning rivers flowing through the landscape and the crisped nature of the foliage overhanging them.

Peering closer and reaching out with his magic, he touched the edge of the painting. The magic which wrought it tasted spicy and deep, myriad smaller signatures below that. The painting was genuine, worth many times more than most wizards earned in a lifetime…

“Yes, Mister Riddle. Cost me the copy of Hohenlohe’s Alles my grandmother left me… But I shall tell you a little secret, Mister Riddle.” She leaned into Tom and whispered, “I had _two_ copies, anyway.”

Tom was unsure how _anyone_ , no matter how influential (or in Smith’s case, how _filthy rich_ ) could manage to get their hands on _two_ copies of _Hohenlohe’s Alles_ , an encyclopaedia of magic containing spells, rituals and fabled creatures lost to wizardkind. It was one of the rarest books in the world. Even the Black Library lacked a copy, though Tom was aware (before the man’s death) Cygnus Black spent years searching for one.

Then they were on the move again. They drifted through a set of small, conjoining rooms, all cased in bookshelves which towered above them, containing tomes he had never even heard of, let alone had chance to covet.

In the centre of one of these reading rooms was an ugly, spiked set of armour giving off a taste of magic both familiar and foreign. The magic was course but powerful, hanging all over the diminutive armour as if hammered into every rivulet and plate.

“Goblin-made,” Smith informed, catching where his eyes were. “Nasty-looking piece, is it not? It belonged to Biakienxe the Bloodthirsty, who led the ten ninety-two goblin revolt against the Council of the Thirteen. They got as far as Aesa Askaban’s lands before crumbling against the fortress. They attempted to sink the island but were held at bay by a powerful group of wizards whose names were never recorded.”

“Fascinating,” Tom hummed.

He chose to step no closer to the armour. Its magic was unpleasant, giving off a watching, waiting, almost _predatory_ vibe. No doubt it was just the sort of item Borgin would be interested in.

“Indeed,” Smith allowed, pointedly adding, “It’s not for sale, of course.”

“Of course,” Tom echoed.

Seeing as the woman kept it out of sight and self-admittedly considered it an eyesore, she could probably be convinced to part with it for a price. Though what a rich woman like Smith would want in exchange, he imagined, was something far rarer than gold.

As the witch gave him the curator’s tour of her museum, Tom spotted countless items he dearly wished to possess. There were ancient tomes on soul magic (a favourite interest of his); display shelves packed with everything from the effects of notable magicals to handwritten memoirs of muggles so famous their works permeated even the Wizarding World; and one room which held the ward-setting jewels recovered from the ruins of Avalon. Titania the Tyrant’s flower-robes were displayed on a golden mannequin with a wreath of shining solberries and silvery, still-growing leaves atop its head. There were chalices of healing and truth in the dining room, incredibly rare tropical plants climbing the walls of the solar.

There were items he had no wish to touch should he live a million years, too. Tom graciously refused to enter the rectory, feeling deathly cold just looking down the sunlit row of urn-packed shelves. He point-blank would not look in the Mirror of Desire when Smith offered him to – it made his skin crawl even from the opposite side of the room. Nor would he approach the Book of Eyes and the Fahre Meer, both of which were long thought lost; the items were rumoured to make any man utilizing them as trapped in visions of possible futures as their creator had been.

The tour came to an end in a room containing a writing desk whose feathery top ruffled without breeze.

“The Muse’s Lay… And this, here,” she mentioned, gesturing towards a black feathered quill on the strange desk, “is the original pen Sylvin Peverell Slytherin forged to write the famous Staff Law. Then this,” she said, pointing out what looked like a common garden stone crudely carved into a hand-sized ring, “is a particularly spectacular find. It is a druid’s sight-stone, carved from Alban gneiss and blessed by the Faerie Shroud.”

Tom _hmmm_ ed in vague interest. “There’s no actual evidence the High Fey are anything more than myth,” he commented softly. “Are you saying you have incontrovertible proof the stories are factual?”

Smith let out a strident giggle. “Oh, my dear Mister Riddle, were we even sure _sirens_ were real just two-hundred years ago? No, we were not – then the Singing Mists were located and sirens discovered to be more than tale. Such is the nature of magic, that it can conceal things even we who trust in it.”

She smiled gently at him but the expression gave him no warmth – it was the sort of smile those girls on the train gave him earlier. He had no desire to let the repulsive Madam Smith think he was attracted to her… But, that was exactly what he needed to do if he were to perform his job properly. He had to charm her, allow her to put her pudgy, liver-speckled hands on his, cursing Borgin to whatever hell there may be the whole while.

“Now you have had the grand tour, may I invite you for a spot of lunch? Hokey makes the most exquisite paella – the best Hebridean prawns, of course – and I shall have him pick up some dessert pastries from Donatella’s.”

There was politeness, there was going beyond the call of duty in the face of fire...and then there was risking Carina’s wrath by not showing up for their long-standing lunch date.

“I’m afraid I have a prior engagement, my lady,” he told Smith, trying to sound regretful he could not take the witch up on her offer.

“Oh, what a shame, Mister Riddle,” she consoled, resting a meaty hand on his forearm. “I do hope Davidos had not got you going on another business excursion so soon, with not even a break for lunch. He should not work such a nice young wizard so very hard.”

“Actually, it is simply that I made plans for lunch with a friend before finding how lovely the morning’s company was to be. I would hate to break them, even for such a generous offer as yours.”

“A lady friend, perhaps? Your fiancée, Mister Riddle?”

While Tom would like nothing more than to tell Smith he was indeed engaged (hopefully that would stop her pawing at him?), it was far from true… Madam Smith need employ only a little digging to uncover such a falsehood. A woman as rich and evidently connected as she was would barely need to lift quill to inkwell to discover Tom was actually unattached and had lied to her…

Regretfully, if he lied to her then he would fail to gain her unconditional trust. In those circumstances, Borgin would either _fire_ him or just use those cursed cockleshells to flambé him. There was little gold associated with Tom’s position but it was enough to legally hold a roof over his head until the Riddles’ estate was firmly in his grasp, making the job something he shouldn’t cast aside over something like a hideous, over-perfumed spinster trying to crawl onto his lap.

It was a point of pride that he had never failed to make an acquisition. He did not plan on such failure now.

“Just a friend, my lady, but I would not risk the consequence of keeping her waiting,” Tom informed Smith with a wide, self-deprecating smile he knew put many people instantly at ease.

“Ah, a woman with a temper, I see,” the witch said knowingly, seeming amused. “A Black or a Prewitt?”

“A Black,” Tom confessed.

“Say no more then, Mister Riddle. You are quite correct – it certainly would not do to keep a Black waiting simply to spend time with an old lady like me. You will need the carriage through Kingswood?”

Relieved by his imminent freedom, he replied, “It would be helpful to have it to the edge of the wards, at the very least. I plan to apparate back to London from there.”

“Very good, very good,” Smith simpered, pulling him in for a completely unwarranted embrace. “You do know, though–“ she leaned back to look up at him, showing the reflection of his irritated expression in her muddy eyes “–that you cannot hope to apparate until you pass Kingswood. There is damage to the forest – the magic there has been unpredictable since Grindelwald visited.”

“I see. Then I request use of the carriage until I am clear of the forest.”

“That will be just fine, Mister Riddle. My ponies are the fastest in all the Isles, they will see you back to Stogumber in no time at all. Hokey!”

The house elf obediently appeared.

“I require you see Mister Riddle back to the coach, if you will.” Hokey nodded and Smith turned to him, saying, “I do hope to see you again. Tell Davidos I shall consider selling some of my least favoured artefacts… That should ensure he sends you again.”

Tom gave a shallow bow. “Of course, my lady. I look forward to it.”

The ride to the outer edges of the forest was uneventful.

Now Tom concentrated, closing his eyes and pushing as much of his own magic out as possible, he could feel the damage Madam Smith spoke of. Whole parts of the forest were warping and Shifting. This was not entirely unusual in an enchanted forest but… every now and then he felt whole regions snap shut as if they never were, while wells opened in other places to swallow rock and tree and earth. It must have been one of the main reasons Kingswood was still deserted more than a year after the attack upon it – rebuilding was difficult, yes, but repairing an area saturated with powerful and volatile magic was nigh-impossible.

Still, the main road through the forest seemed safe enough – he felt no pitfalls on it. By the time he got beyond the affected area, he was satisfied no harm was likely to come to him should he have to travel through Kingswood again (and likely Tom _would_ have to, for Smith was right in suggesting giving Borgin even an _inch_ of hope she might be inclined to sell something would have the man pulling out all possible charms at his disposal – namely _Tom_ himself).

Tom apparated back to London from behind a handily placed rock formation that blocked him from sight of the moors beyond. He popped into existence at the apparation terminal in upper Orch Hill, already half in stride. Those who failed to quickly vacate the apparation area were often flattened beneath newcomers, a lesson he had seen one or two classmates learn practically.

Orch Mead lacked the apparation points of its more upper-class neighbour, though was no less desirable of an area to live in. Tom trod his way down the winding, cobble path bridging the two districts, hands in his pockets and the barest hint of a smile pulling at his lips. No matter what some of the more uptight purebloods might say about Orch Mead, Tom found it a warm, enchanting area full of magic. Just being there never failed to buoy his mood.

The White Admiral sat right on a small river that had no name. It was a wide, oval building of only one story, with a flat, grassy roof. Surrounding the café was an extensive garden, punctuated with playing greens and ponds which attracted more magical wildlife than Tom had seen anywhere else outside of Hogwarts.

The café was co-owned by the Black and Lindendell families, the former of whom ran the business like clockwork, the latter maintaining the landscape as a perfect magical nature reserve and recreational area. It was true the Blacks owned half of Magical London, meaning one could hardly throw a spell without hitting something _one_ of them had shares it, set up or was the landlord of… but the Admiral was _special_. To Tom it was important in a way very little in his life was, for it was the brainchild of his closest confidant, Carina Black.

Flowers and vines wound their way up the legs of all the tables, reminding Tom of the way they did so around the homes in Kingswood. Unlike in the forest, at the Admiral the plants were welcomed and felt far less malevolent. Carina and her teacup were sitting at the most overgrown table of the lot, several white butterflies lazily sunning themselves in her out-of-control black curls. A towering, half-read ream of parchment was stacked up around her.

She was also asleep.

Tom picked his way to her table, making no attempts at stealth but not waking her with his approach all the same. When he reached her, he moved a tottering pile of papers off the chair opposite. Slipping into his seat, he glanced down at the topmost parchment, seeing the paperwork was in relation to business at the Admiral – namely, it was accounting work. All Blacks were versed in such practically from the cradle but it was no wonder the tedium of the subject sent his friend to sleep.

Reaching out with one foot, Tom delicately nudged her in the leg. Blearily – after a bit more shoving – Carina raised her head.

“You know,” Tom said with some amusement, “I could have made off with your paperwork, if I wanted to. This is not the best place to catch up on beauty sleep.”

Rubbing at her grey eyes, his friend sighed. “Naturally, you could have. Yet you didn’t. Besides, you would have been doing me a favour – I hate bookkeeping.”

“If I had, you wouldn’t have anything to turn in to your father at the end of the month. I thought he was a particularly exacting investor, even to his own children?”

Carian laughed – a throaty, life-steeled sound that always came across as dissonant with her practically angelic appearance. “Oh, by all means… It would give him something else to complain about. Take some of the heat off for me.” When Tom frowned, she elaborated, “In the last month he has had me on courting dinners with Malafois, Bulstrode and Moon. He is adamant I marry before turning twenty-one and is… ‘unwilling’ to have to disown his youngest daughter. Apparently, he doesn’t like the idea of having such a stain on his branch of the family tree.”

“I thought he gave up on the idea after Parkinson lost his... delicate parts?”

She shrugged. “You would presume so, wouldn’t you? It was only a cousin from the very outlying branches of the line… Not grievous enough an action, on my part, to discourage further suitors.”

Flicker her wand, Carina sent her overflowing pile of paperwork off somewhere (presumably her office), tearing off a small corner of one of the sheets of parchment before doing so. She scrawled a short note on it and, with a tap of her wand, it curled itself into a minuscule bird, fluttering off towards the café.

“Just a light lunch. Corbin knew you were coming,” she said offhandedly, then asked, “And when are _you_ going to marry, my dearest Tom? I’m sure they must be lining up down Diagon to be _Missus Tom Riddle_.”

It was his turn to scoff. “No, they prefer the look of me more for practice, I imagine. No self-respecting pureblooded family would allow one of their daughters to marry the spawn of muggles.”

“You are a halfblood,” Carian pointed out factually, “not a mudblood.”

“Indeed… Yet it’s very hard to prove. Parseltongue alone is admittedly impressive, though certainly not enough proof of recent wizarding ancestry to absolve me. I might as well be a mudblood, for all they know or care… Thank the heavens for _that_ , too – the very last thing I need is some vapid witch clinging to me, let alone one I can’t get rid of.”

“Aw, what a crying shame, Tommy,” she consoled mockingly, laying a hand on his arm, “being able to find a bed-warmer and not a wife.” She sighed. “If only I were so lucky. I’ve been trying to make myself as ugly and slovenly as possible, hoping to drive them off…”

Needless to say, those attempts were not working. Carina possessed a natural beauty and light no amount of bad manners or poor self-care could erase.

“…For some reason, they keep coming to father’s dinners, though, so I guess I must be doing something wrong.”

Tom kept his thoughts on Carina’s desirable features to himself. For a Black, she was incredibly oblivious, though as loyal to family as any of her cousins and siblings. It would only be a matter of time before his Carina gave into her father’s desires, marrying some rich pureblood, begetting a child and resigning herself to a life barely abidable.

Shortly, the Admiral’s chef came out with two plates, a bowl of salad, some good, crumbly cheese and a bottle of red.

Serving herself, Carina commented, “You know, if you didn’t insist you were as asexual as a flobberworm, I could marry _you_. It would be much better than having to lie with that ogre Bulstrode.”

“I’m sure I already outlined why I’m _not_ beating off pureblooded heiresses with bats. Have you ever heard of the _Riddle_ family?”

“Acknowledged… but I’m only a second daughter. He has Wally and Alphie, so any match I make needn't be purely political.”

Went unsaid was the truth Tom knew all too well. _Need_ or not, her father – Pollux Black – was determined to make advantageous matches for all his daughters. Tom even heard he was proposing Walburga, his eldest daughter, marry Orion from the main branch of the family (even though they were close cousins) simply so his line would gain lordship from the other.

“I know,” Carina said despondently, exhaling heavily. “It’s just… well, I _like_ you. I have no knowledge of half those Father suggests – and the ones I _do_ I actively abhor. What he was thinking suggesting _Derek Bulstrode_ , I will never know. But if he would let me select _anyone_ , I would choose _you_.”

Though flattered, Tom reminded, “I have no interest in such things, as you well know.”

“Yes… We would only have to produce one heir, though. We could use potions to make sure _relations_ we kept to the bare minimum.” His friend shuddered, her long, gold nails tightening their hold on her wine glass. “ _Sweet Circe_ , you know I love you… but I haven't any desire to do _that_ with you, either.”

“Why even make such a suggestion, then?” he asked bemusedly.

Surely she would not even be bringing up the subject of a possible marriage between them unless there were chance of it… or unless she was growing _incredibly desperate_.

“Oh Tom,” she huffed, twining her fork in her salad distractedly, “you _know_ I have no intention of marrying any of the men my father insists on parading in front of me. They are not to my tastes.”

“As far as I was aware,” he replied with one brow raised in humour, “ _I_ am not to your tastes, either. I have rather too much equipment, do I not?”

Carina chuckled. “Precisely. Regardless, I could stomach a marriage with you. You are my closest friend and you aren’t – as you often say – even ‘interested in that sort of thing’. You’re _perfect_ for me. We marry, produce the required one heir, then spend the remainder of our years pursuing our own interests. Which, in _your_ case would be knowledge and–“

“In _yours_ would be continuing your studies in intimate sorority?”

“Something like that.” Carina smiled at him beatifically. “You know what I’m getting at… If I cannot marry for love, I would at least like to be wed to somebody I won’t desire to murder within five minutes of drinking from the chalice.

“Hmmm… I suppose I could just _poison_ the chalice…” she mused to herself.

“You know,” Tom said curiously, buttering a roll, “at some point, you will have to tell me just what it was Parkinson said to warrant such violent emasculation.”

“Why, are you worried you may make the same mistake?” she asked, then continued, before he could reply, “Believe me, you _won’t_ err as that buffoon.”

“Who did what, exactly?”

“Let’s just say the _quaffle_ is not the only thing Bulstrode wants to get his fat fingers on… and leave it at that.”

“Do you–“ Tom began to enquire, before being interrupted by the arrival of one of the White Admiral’s waiting staff.

A small, mousy witch collected up their lunch things, asking if they needed anything else.

“Yes, bring tea for two, please, Tabitha,” his friend requested the waitress.

The woman nodded in understanding and vanished again a moment later.

“You were saying?” Carina prompted. “Do I _what_ ”

Tom, however, had lost his train of thought. “I'm not sure… Have you often gelt unwanted suitors? Does your father know what Bulstrode did?”

“No to the first, certainly to the second. _Where_ do you think I learned that curse? Father takes my safety very seriously.”

Conversation stuttered out following that but it was a comfortable silence that existed between them. Carina, with the sure turns and easy flow of somebody who has done something repeatedly their entire lives, served them both tea with cream. The tea arrived with one of the Admirals best apple pies. Though he led a generally ascetic life, Tom had a weakness for good pastries – it went doubly so for good pie.

“So why,” Tom began, digging into his second serving of dessert, “are you balancing the books yourself? I was under the impression your brother was taking care of that side of things for you.”

“Alphie’s on his honeymoon, remember? A month in the tropics with his new bride – sometimes I think we Blacks keep that place to ensure quick conception... It’s supposed to be particularly magnificent. What I wouldn’t give for a weeks holiday out there! Or just to move their permanently, come to think of it… No snow, no duties, no stupid marriage proposals...”

Feeling pity for Carina, who had been his closest companion ever since they were acquainted during second year, he suggested, “You could always leave,” though knowing no Black would desert their family – _especially_ not her.

“As if I could survive without the family accounts,” she muttered jokingly, as if that somehow covered up the depth of loyalty she had towards the rest of the Blacks. “Besides, if I left then where would we go for Thursday luncheons?”

“It’s Wednesday,” he deadpanned quite factually. Then suggested, “The Savoy, perhaps?” with an airy laugh. “Or some muggle hole-in-the-wall, if you didn’t manage to clear your vaults before leaving.”

“Can you imagine _me_ in some muggle slum?”

No, never.

It was impossible to picture Carina anywhere not filled with magic – like Hogwarts, her manor or this flower garden. As a phoenix or a unicorn, she was an innately magical being more so than anyone else he knew. She would never blend into the drab grey of the muggle world, even should she spend the rest of her life trying to.

He forwent her question, as the answer was too obvious to bother answering.

“Well,” he stated, “if I ever – as unlikely as it seems – have need to marry then I promise you shall be the first woman I consider.”

It was true. Tom would never _dream_ of marrying anyone but Carina – and he had no intention of ever doing _that..._ not unless he _had_ to. Marriage and women were not something that interested him… Romantically, he had never found interest in _anyone_ , in fact, something unlikely to change in the future. If one could pass through their most hormonal years without a flutter of arousal for another, there was little hope of such things arising in adulthood.

“I’m flattered, truly,” she told him drily.

Her distant, part-worried and part-wistful expression did not clear.

Tom took her hand across the table, offering as much comfort as he was capable of. It was not much, admittedly, but would have to be enough for the time being. Perhaps, in some way, he could help his friend with her situation further down the line. For now, though, joint-commiseration at the stupidity of society’s expectations was the extent of his abilities.

Carina smiled back at him, as if knowing precisely where his thoughts were and understanding his stance entirely, if not finding it helpful.

_Why bother with the petty problems of the racist purebloods who would see you cast out for your differences?_

_Yes_ , he reiterated to himself, _this will have to be enough._


	8. Chapter 8

_posted: 2017-12-17_  
_edits: indent hat speech_

  

“ **The Muggle’s be pretty surprised to view a map of the Isles, if we put areas back on it they can’t get to.** Think on it – London would bulge further north than they think and Edinburgh’d be a lot bigger. The ‘Isle’ of Man’d be less an island and more… a ridge – Mockridge, even – surrounded by wide, sloping planes.

“They’d realise plenty o’ that ‘ocean’ they think’s between Eire and southwest of Alba’s never been sailed… Merlin knows how they don’t notice that one! Doesn’t even _exist_! And if one guy decided it’d be a great laugh to leave behind a hunk of muggle-accessible land shaped like a gentleman’s wand… well, why not?

“And Lyonesse! Give a better map and they’d have to acknowledge there’s a whole _county_ between Cornwall and Scilly…

“Ah – poor, gullible muggles… Least they might get a laugh out the story o’ how Lyonesse fell to a group of dragged-up muggle chappies brandishing nothing bu’ sticks and mildly-hallucinogenic smoke bombs.

“Just think, though… They’d be ‘stounded to learn the truth behind one geological formation that’s bothered them for years.”

“What’s that?”

“Why, boy, Hogwarts o’ course! Hogwarts… The school sits on the least skilled bit o’ anti-muggle warding that’s ever been! Not unskilled ‘cause the muggles’re likely to come across it any time soon – or ever. Unskilled ‘cause the blasted Founders went a left a great big line there! Slices northeast-southwest, straight ‘cross the top bit of Alba like some sod decided the Isle’s needed circumcising.

“The muggles’ve spent so much time looking for sensible reasons the country southwest of Inverness is formed so weird, a straight line cut almost down to the opposite coast. At this point, think they’ve mostly given up and convinced themselves it’s a ‘perfectly naturally occurring oddity’, as their brains like to say…

“Honestly, _muggles_ … They’ll believe anything if it means having an answer.”

 

                          – _Concisus Fletcher, the third tutor, 1940_

 

 

 

 _june _  
the sorting of staff

 

 

 **"...AND," SLUGHORN ANNOUNCED with a wide, exuberant wave of his slightly stumpy arms, “this is the Grand Staircase! **Quite the extraordinary piece of charmswork. All Slytherin’s own calculations, you know – he was quite the Arithmatect!”

It was frustratingly shitty to desperately try and view Hogwarts from the perspective of an outsider. He was forced to feign interest in the subtle, complex enchantments that surrounded him daily the three years he got to attend the school; if the world had been a better, more right place, he’d have already had seven years to enjoy the castle’s ambience.

Craning his head back far as it would go, he couldn’t make out more than a shade of the distant roof; above the seventh floor, everything blurred together. High over the cavernous stairwell, too distant to see, the roof arched, framed by a dizzying number of shifting stairways. As he looked now, a thundering, grinding echoed out just above them as a staircase passed directly overhead, connecting itself to a remote mezzanine about three floors up. A cascade of dust poured from its undercarriage.

Sharper than in his youth (when such deluges caught him on a near-daily basis), Harry shot out the way of the incoming debris. Reaching the foot of the Grand Staircase, safely out the falling dust’s range, he watched in great surprise as the whole shower impacted with some invisible wardline above Slughorn’s head. It disintegrated into sparks, scattering in every direction like a flock of distressed fireflies.

Harry smiled bemusedly at the foreign magic. Certainly hadn’t been like that in _his_ day.

Apparently mistaking his expression for one of concern, the robust professor ‘guiding’ him put a firm hand on Harry’s shoulder in reässurance. He fought the urge to shrug it off… or stick something sharp and pointy through it.

“Not to worry, my lad,” the man chortled with a broad smile. “They’re entirely harmless, you know.”

Slughorn’s statement seemed true enough. The dust, pouring away on the impotent draft airing the stairwell, coated the two of them in a gentle glow of crackling sparks and that warm, comforting tingle that often accompanied well-cast protection magic. Unburned and completely clean, it was a clearly amused Potions Master who led Harry further into the castle.

In a tedious display of unabashed curiosity, Harry was careful to keep up a constant flow of questions as he and the man wound their way deeper and deeper into the tortuous maze of Hogwarts’ corridors. He made dumb queries about the age of the castle and its adornments; he chatted to the occupants of several paintings until even Slughorn tired of tarrying; he showed uncommon interest in the odd trick step needing skipping; he intrusively enquired as to the nuances of magic causing certain doors to only be accessible on a Thursday or on a blue moon.

The professor had just began inquiry, in return, on the unknown wonders of Harry’s own alma mater, when they mercifully turned onto a recognisable corridor. During his Hogwarts career, he made his way along it one time too many; he was all too familiar with the richly woven tapestries and long landscapes along the stretch of walls leading up to the Headmaster’s office, hiding the stonework beneath entirely.

Standing directly opposite a wide painting – he now knew it was of the countryside surrounding Godric’s Hill – was a terribly ugly, demonish statue, dressed in ill-fitting, spiked armour. The freakishly tall gargoyle sneered down at them, presumably waiting for either the password or the chance to disembowel them.

“Prometheus,” Slughorn stated sharply, not seeming to like the gargoyle’s attitude any better than Harry did.

The thing’s roughly hewn mouth downturned and it sprang aside disgruntledly, allowing them to pass. Harry immediately breathed a small sigh at neither having been gutted nor having lef enough time for Slughorn to give him a proper grilling on Koschey, whose secrets he was bound to protect.

Dippet kept his office very different to how Dumbledore had. It was still as round as ever and still the walls were cluttered with the loudly snoring portraits of hundreds of past headmasters and mistresses. It was the rest of the room that was almost unrecognisable.

Mahogany floors, polished to the degree you could probably use them to see up a girl’s skirt, were strewn with extravagant oriental rugs, whose faunal patterns were threaded-through with the richest blues and golds. The rugs edged below understated but bulky baroque furniture, most of which towered with journals and stacks of thick, leatherbound tomes. The apparently indelible, bizarre trinkets, warm carpets and undulating candlelight – hallmarks of Dumbledore’s eclectic taste – were all absent in favour of a stern sense of authority and that dry smell that tended to accompany academia.

Where the new places Harry ventured in the last seven years were already unfamiliar – and thus unshocking – to see one he knew intimately, so utterly changed… It truly hammered home just how different a time he’d got himself stuck in, even half a decade after the actual fact. The office was undeniably familiar but strangely distorted – like viewing a loved one through a wall of water.

Located behind a truly titanic desk, was Headmaster Dippet himself, wearing a funny sort of fur hat and dutifully scratching away in an open ledger before him. The man’s wizened head rose as Harry and Slughorn entered, greeting the newcomers to his office with a welcoming smile that didn’t seem quite all there.

“Ah,” Dippet started with a slight croak, “this strapping young man must be the dear son you told me of, Horace. What was your name again, child?”

Beside him, Slughorn flinched perceptively but soldiered on nonetheless. He put a hand on Harry’s shoulder, stilling the reply the latter was about to make.

“No…” Slughorn replied carefully. “Not my son… You _do_ recall, don’t you Armando? I requested permission to take on an _apprentice_ this year. You approved it yourself.”

The Headmaster placed an anxious, faintly trembling hand to his forehead, dislodging his unusual headgear enough to show that, but for some long, thin hair curling around the sides, he was almost entirely bald beneath.

The elderly wizard’s brow furrowed deeply, as he wondered aloud, “Where _is_ your son, then? Lucille, was it? I’m rather afraid I have been under the impression _he_ was to be your apprentice.”

“No, Armando. There’s been, shall we say… a change of plans. I’ve asked young Heir Potter here to fill the position.” Slughorn gestured awkwardly at Harry. “He’s a budding potioneer, you know. Why, already he’s concocted at least one highly useful brew of his own – life-saving potion, in fact!”

Sure, sure – concocted or… stolen the recipe out a textbook bought in the future…

Born in sixteen thirty-seven, according to records, Headmaster Armando Dippet was over three-hundred years old and likely nearing the end of his long life. As such, the man seemed entirely unaware of the discomforted expression on his employee’s face as he spoke, or the tense state of Slughorn’s posture. For his part, Harry _did_ take note of the redness drawn across the Potions Master’s cheeks and the forced lightness of his tone, filing both away for later investigation. Something was clearly going on there.

Dippet pompously – and somewhat crassly – ploughed on, stating in solemn tones, “Truly, it is the _greatest tragedy_ that fine young men such as your son choose to reject the chance to be apprenticed to you, Horace. I often think not enough children follow in their fathers’ footsteps, nowadays – instead of scholars and potioneers, this generation has run wild! Gallivanting off chasing faeries and treasure, rifling Ancient Egyptian tombs and trying to woo pretty virgins into their chambers! The youth are just not what they were in _my_ day…”

Slughorn nodded his agreement with a tight smile, leaning back on his heels.

“Regardless,” the Headmaster announced, lifting both hands in a friendly gesture, “welcome to you, young Porter. We are most pleased to be having your more-studious, less- _adventurous_ sort joining our school. _I_ am Armando Dippet, Headmaster of Hogwarts,” he introduced belatedly. “Shall we get on with things?”

For the first time since coming into the room, Harry spoke up. “ _Things,_ Headmaster?”

“Yes, yes!” the gentleman enthused, tone at odds with the sloth-like way he pulled himself out his chair and feebly crossed the room to collect a mountainous, worn ledger from its housing of a velvet cushion. “The Staff Law, boy.”

Regaining of of the composure he lost earlier in the conversation, Slughorn informed, “That, Hadrian, holds a record of every staff member to have ever walked these halls. Personal history, educational background, accomplishments in their fields, time in services, waves… everything. A relic from the age of the Founders themselves, coated in more enchantments than possibly even the castle itself! Why, it’s so ancient it contains information on the first supplementary instructor the Founding Four hired, when Ravenclaw ailed – Newton Chandler, if I recall correctly?”

“Quite right, Horace,” the Headmaster confirmed absently, flicking through the book at snail’s pace.

Slughorn continued his lecture. “It’s completely confidential, naturally. Pages can only be read by he they refer to, unless they give special permission or pass from this world. Not even the Headmaster can force access.”

After a dull number of minutes passed, Dippet came to a blank page.

A feather, albatrossian in size but still downy, of a pale, golden yellow that made him think of Sera’s wings, was retrieved from yet another superfluous cushion, before being dipped into a shimmering sort of ink. Harry hadn’t ever seen ink like this in person, though had vaguely heard of it: Used to record magical birth, marriage and death certificates (among other official records), the ink was changeable to time and circumstance, updating automatically (it was also responsible for insisting Harry’s date of birth was the twenty-third of August). It was an expensive thing and, he’d read, the nature of its magic unknown to all but the most specialised of wizards; theorising, people thought it based on the ancient bloodline potion self-updating family trees were made with.

Dippet stuck the quill in the ink, rested it point down on the blank page, then pushed the book aside.

Conjuring up a pair of striped, squishy armchairs with a thoughtless turn of his wand, Slughorn let out a grateful wheeze, settling himself into one and gesturing for Harry to take the other.

“Here we go, then,” the Headmaster whispered in anticipation, as though to himself. With a cough to clear his scratchy throat, the man’s next words were a query directed at Harry. “Full name?”

Intrigued, as Harry replied he observed the tail of the golden quill dance across the parchment it was set to. “Hadrian Charlusovitch Potter,” he admitted with some chagrin.

Sometimes, cover stories got embarrassing.

Then, recalling the preferred wizarding format for giving your name in the Isles, he amended, “Hadrian son of Charlus of the Great House of Potter.”

Not even glancing to see what the quill denoted, Dippet continued, “Date and place of naming?”

“Kitezh, Russia, on August twenty-third, nineteen twenty-six.”

One of Slughorn’s legs jigged, hands wringing in excitement. Harry could almost _see_ the torrent of questions about the impossible city of his ‘birth’ rush through the man’s gleaming eyes.

“Begat to?”

 _Titles, not people…_ his mind supplied, while his lips said, “His Grace, the Duke of Gloucester – Lord Charlus Glyndwr of the Great House of Potter… and the Duchess of Gloucester – Lady Castora Dorea Potter of the Great House of Black.”

“Marital fortune?”

“Widowed.”

“Bonds?”

“Broken…”

On and on the quill pottered… The questions put to Harry – mostly ridiculous and pointless by his reckoning – poured forth. Finally, just as Dippet nonsensically probed him on his favourite cheese, Harry burst.

In strained tones, he forced out as politely as he could, “Is all this _really necessary_?”

The Potions Master chuckled unabashedly, even as Dippet let out a great, put-upon sigh and said simply, “Just answer that last.”

Harry fought the urge to screw his eyes shut in flustered exasperation, calling forth all the patience allotted him (not much). “Bryndza,” he said firmly, wondering how it could ever matter.

Giving a satisfied nod, the Headmaster turned away from Harry. Oddly, the aged man directed his next query _to the book_ , upon which the quill had danced away while they spoke. From his angle, Harry could just about see the ‘H’ of his forename was now a magnificent illumination on the once-blank page, spreading a good third down it, though grey in colouring. Written in tight, medieval script, it was almost impossible to read the rest of the perfectly even, imbricated letters reforming, he assumed, his personal information; the paragraphs on his stretched all the way down one page, over-spilling onto the next.

“Well, seeing as you’ve had quite enough of _that_ ,” Slughorn declared, amusement beneath his words, “should we move onto the Sorting?”

Though a question clearly directed towards the scatterbrained Headmaster, who responded affirmatively, Harry started in surprise. There was no time to consider the unwelcome prospect of being Sorted a second time, or the quite-possibly-damning things the Hat might find in his head… Before he knew it, the battered leather hat topped his head; unlike when he was eleven, if fit snugly now, leaving his annoyingly-vulnerable expression exposed to the room.

    _‘I’ll see you again someday, Harry Potter.”_

An odd greeting – one that sounded farewell. How could the Hat possibly already know Harry met it previously? Unless…

    _‘No, of course not! Time is as linear to me as it **ought** to be to you, Harry Potter. Or **Hadrian** , I suppose,’ _it added, mockingly over-enunciating his adopted name. _‘Awfully pompous alias, that.’_

Harry grumbled. Not like he chose it himself. Actually, at the time he recalled objecting quite loudly to it… and being thoroughly ignored.

Truth was, Jameson, then paterfamilias of House Potter, declared Harry a ‘common name’ (reminding Harry of Petunia, though the man would’ve baulked at being compared to a skinny, nosy woman of lower class than he). Following that conversation, a fortnight passed of his ‘uncle’ and Dorea brainstorming new names, all of them vetoed by either Jameson, Dorea or Harry himself. (To be fair, Harry vetoed _Hadrian_ , too, only to give in when faced with the foul final alternatives of Haroldir and Herrod.)

    _‘He always was a precocious little swot – terrorised even the Ravenclaws. Genius, of course, and in this office for fighting even more than his brother. Grew up to be one of those nasty, superior-and-controlling types, did he? Damned despot.”_

Thinking back on the scant few years of his acquaintance with Lord Jameson Potter, Harry couldn’t help but agree that ‘despot’ fit his character nicely. Jameson demanded his ‘nephew’ become – effectively – the most powerful and knowledgeable teenager in the world, all the while betraying Harry’s most dangerous secrets to an Unspeakable, nearly resulting in Harry’s death. Also, he knew for a fact Jameson was self-important enough (despite basically qualifying only as an unemployed layabout living off family money – albeit a _titled_ one, which apparently made it okay) to be allowed to sleep around behind his wife’s back, while also regularly starting what can only be described as bar brawls (if by ‘bar’, you mean upmarket gentleman’s club).

    _‘Ha! Always knew that boy would never learn to solve a problem his fists. I **did** warn him it would be his downfall one day…”_

And so it was. Harry wouldn’t be surprised if Jameson threw a few punches in his fatal duel with Grindelwald. He was probably mostly-drunk for that fight, too. You’d think a man who’d been, at one time, Head of the Aurors would know better, but… No. As far as Harry saw, Jameson was a rowdy teenager stuck in an ageing body, given far more power and respect than deserved.

 _Idiocy demands responsibility_ , Harry noted not for the first time.

    _‘Indeed! Wonderful gossip, Mister Potter, wonderful gossip!’_

The Hat sounded overexcited. Harry almost expected that, when removed, it would leave sticky residue in his hair.

    _‘Don’t be so disgusting,’_ the Hat admonished. _‘This is just fascinating stuff!’_

From there, the Hat moved on from the behaviour of the late Lord Potter to ramble off at a thousand miles a minute. Too fast for his thoughts to follow, it went off about the ineffability of fate and the many paths that lead you the same place, asking dozens of redundant questions about what advances in magic there would be in the next few decades (redundant because the Hat must be able to see it all laid out in his head).

   ‘ _Naturally. Incredibly rude to go a-wandering round in someone’s memories, though.’_

How could you Sort and not poke about?

    _‘Can’t. Most eleven-year-olds don’t even question how much I see – or care, even. Difference is merely that you are old enough to fully understand what a gross breach of privacy this is.’_

One of the earliest lessons Koschey taught was that it was incredibly foolish to allow anyone or anything, no matter how cared for or trusted, access to the entirety of your life – magically, mentally or literally. (If he’d paid proper attention to that advice, he’d be much better off right now.) Harry supposed, even if they didn’t think the same a thousand years ago – when the Hat was made – the Wizarding World was semi-visible to muggles, meaning the school’s staff would have wanted to ensure no incoming student was about to sell them all out to a bunch of witch-hunting lunatics. Still, the whole thing was hardly a barrel of laughs…

The Hat’s frayed felt and leather brim shifted on Harry’s head, giving the impression of impatience.

    _‘Yes yes, quite right – nasty, all-knowing Mister Hat… Now, onto the business! What House for you?”_

Really? _That_ was how they Sorted staff?

    _‘Not as a rule. In this case… you have no desire to be Sorted by nature, so it will have to be the next best thing – by want… Some things never change.’_

If Harry were to choose for himself, Gryffindor was the logical choi _–_

                                                                                                                               _‘Is it?’_

Well... it was his House in the future, in which he lived throughout his time at the school. It was the warm, welcoming place in which he, for the first time in his life, found friends, a home, and made countless hours of good memories to chase away years of the Dursleys. Gryffindor was a burst of red that shot through his life, giving him a place to belong; it was made up of a group of not only fellow wizarding children but specifically those whose personalities were as tempestuous yet honourable as his own had been.

A significant drawback, though, was that those happy memories embodied a life he lost. For years, his memories of the future were pushed aside in favour of living in the present; to step back into a world where he considered himself a proud member of Gryffindor… it would be a step backwards, perhaps detrimental to all the work undertaken to accept his home was now in the forties. Even though he made peace with his lot long ago, he wasn’t sure he could live in the staff hallway off Gryffindor Tower… not without dredging up hundreds of memories of Ron, Hermione and a dozen other people he’d never see again.

    _‘Right you are. Not to mention, Dumbledore takes a keen interest in any and all members of his House, adult or not.’_ The Hat’s voice took on a wry, sarcastic quality. _‘I was under the impression you wished to avoid him as much as possible… Was I mistaken?’_

It was damn uppity for a hat.

    _‘Who are **you** calling uppity? Respect your elders!’_

The Hat’s booming outrage was tinged with amusement. Harry figured the Hat lived a monotonous life, sat on a shelf trying to come up with a good song for the next Sorting Ceremony, so he decided not to complain that the sheer mental volume of its voice was enough to scramble his thoughts for weeks to come.

    _‘Technically, you **did** just complain about it.’_

Harry wasn’t sure he at all liked the Hat. When he was eleven it wasn’t this chatty… or condescending, for that matter. Probably because he spent the whole time focused on stopping the thing putting him in Slytherin. Guess their lack of acquaintance was a good thing, seeing as the Hat was turning out to be an aggravating little ba--

    _‘Folks in greenhouses, Potter,’_ the Hat interjected smugly.

It shivered on his head, like a bird shaking water from its feathers, before arching back imperiously and declaring, _‘Time to sort you out. And if you’re not a good boy, I’ll jam you straight in Slytherin…’_ It paused dramatically for a moment, before threatening, _‘Or worse yet, **Gryffindor**.’_

 _Alright, alright!_ Perhaps it wasn’t best to antagonise the oh-so-wise magical artefact that held absolute sway over a decision that would-- Wait, do what? Was there even any point to this? It’s not like he was going to be going to classes.

    _‘Everyone’s Sorted. Just how it is. It’s good for student morale to know which House their teachers belong to. Better than a stoning, don't you think?’_

Yeah, or it encouraged further dissent and favouritism. One or the other.

So fine, this decision may or may not affect the path of his entire teaching career. Instead of making further complaints, Harry should accept that the Hat was definitely a very important player in the school and wholly deserving of his respect… And he said that with no irony whatsoever.

    _‘Much better… Now, where to put you?’_

Even if Gryffindor was where his heart lay, going with his heart had led him into nothing but trouble in the past.

    _‘Not to mention you’ve got that somewhat baseless dislike of Dumbledore going on. Great man… but, I suppose, to some his busybody tendencies may be viewed poorly. Quite the chatterbox – always was. Took me twenty minutes to Sort him… Wouldn’t stop going on about his mother’s salt-crusted liver-snap pie.’_

He ignored the Hat, trying to weigh his options, as he genuinely gave a fuck. Which he didn’t. At all.

    _‘I heard that.’_

Course it did. It could hear everything. The Hat could be very useful in interrogations… or as a weapon of mass annoyance.

Gryffindor would bring back a wave of memories he didn’t want to examine. He was brave, sure, but not _that_ brave.

There was Ravenclaw. The House was completely neutral, well-respected and antisocial. Despite those attractive traits, it didn’t seem like an option for him. Harry was by no means a dimwit but he _did_ lack the obsessive drive Ravenclaws had to know absolutely everything about everything, however useless, obscure or even outright obsolete.

He was a practical man, excelling in theory only if he put his mind to it… which he was rarely wont to do. Harry never took to studying to the degree the majority of Ravenclaws – and Hermione – did, who appeared to be sustained on knowledge alone, if the sheer number of books at their dinner table was any indication.

He was no fit for Ravenclaw. Real members of the House would notice.

Hufflepuff was viable, if he didn’t mind being thought a duffer. Known for being hardworking and loyal to the extreme, for going unnoticed and unacclaimed, that House accepted members from all walks of life. Though, some of the more violent aspects of his personality would probably scare the meek little Hufflepuffs to death…

Then the obvious choice for someone like him: Slytherin. Fuck, hadn’t that idea haunted him his whole time at Hogwarts – that he was a near-ideal Slytherin candidate. Stupid, really. He was put off by the House by Hagrid’s verbose condemnation of it, in addition to the words of other first-years on the train; his avoidance was quickly vindicated by Draco Malfoy and his associates, who were soon Sorted there. The staunch dislike he had, in his youth, of anything Slytherin was only strengthened by it having Voldemort as alumnus.

Studying at a foreign academy showed Harry how narrow-minded his younger-self was, disregarding all Slytherin’s simply because he disagreed with some of the more repulsive ideals the House embodied, or the public practices of the minority of its students. Koschey’s division system relied purely on the types of magic their students were best suited to, rather than on personality differences. There, he grew out of judging others badly based on which Hogwarts House they were in.

Truthfully, the Slytherins were jacks of all trades, upholding many traits from the other three Houses: Hardworking and patient, known for biding their time for years, slowly inching their way to victory; they had a special kind of bravery (not augmented with hotheadedness, like those prone to Gryffindor) and the wit of Ravenclaws (but quicker, without the dry studiousness).

Think on your feet. That was Slytherin: think on your feet and strike at the most opportune moment, no matter how long you have to wait to get the upper hand. The House was social warfare at its finest.

    _‘So that’s your choice?’_

He started, having almost forgotten the Hat was there at all, creeping on every twist of his thoughts.

No, not Slytherin, even if he was perfectly suited. Last thing he needed was to invoke any instinctive wariness in Dumbledore; it was an unfortunate truth the man was naturally suspicious of nearly all Slytherins, probably whether they studied at Hogwarts or not. Dumbledore wasn’t the only one, either. Everyone expected Slytherins to be underhanded, over-ambitious toffs that would step over their own families so long as it meant reaching the top. The House tended to churn out solicitors, politicians and cut-throat businessmen, primarily, and Harry didn’t really want to be known as any of those (being a regular breaker of laws, who despised the game of politics in all its forms and had been known to accept making a loss if it assuaged a moral dilemma).

Besides, he didn’t fancy getting stuck in the dungeons. He’d had enough of that for a lifetime.

Atop his head, the Hat sank into a long-suffering sigh. _‘If not Slytherin, then what? If you’ll hurry… I don’t have all day.’_

Harry begged to differ. As clothing, the Hat hardly had a large number of pressing social engagements to get to. Not being funny, but… surely having someone to talk to was better than sitting on a shelf year after year, gathering dust while waiting for September first to roll around… only then to be subjected to the trivial inanity of juvenile minds?

Sounded like a real hoot.

    _‘How do **you** know what I do in my spare time?’ _ the Hat asked snidely, with an underlay of faked offence. _‘Maybe I’m planning on a trip? Besides that, you clearly don’t know how to hold a conversation – you’ve spent far more time thinking about yourself than actually keeping me company. Such vanity.’_

Harry ignored that insult, instead wondering what a hat does for its holidays.

    _‘Perhaps I plan on going skiing? I hear Samnaun’s particularly lovely this time of year!’_ The Hat twitched in agitation. _‘Choose, or it’s Gryffindor for you.’_

_Fine!_

Unreasonably panicked, Harry made a split-second choice. Better not be assumed a politician or something, when it was easier to go by unremarkable – and theoretically largely unbothered – in Hufflepuff. He must qualify, what with having had loyalty pledged – and carefully kept – to the Tsaress for years, toiled for even longer trying to recreate portkeys despite being pants at arithmancy, and just refusing to give up on all but the most lost of causes… He must qualify for Hufflepuff, right?

    _‘So you do,’_ the Hat noted smartly.

Whatever it was so pleased about went unmentioned.

Before Harry could dare change his mind again, the wide mouth-like split at the Hat’s brim was revealed. It didn’t shout out his new House, the way it did when Sorting first-years in the Great Hall, but displayed a more sedate and… well, quite a bit more _swaggery_ , frontage.

   “Hufflepuff...” it announced amusedly, an air of accomplished finality hanging about the word.

And that was that.

With tense hands, Harry went to remove the Hat from his head, trying to look apathetic about all this; it was hard to pull off, when he’d just forsaken the heart of his Houseproud, eleven-year-old self. No matter how hard he conditioned himself to leave his future-life behind, some things were as deeply ingrained as eye colour and bloodline – he was Gryffindor through and through, damn it!

    _‘If you say so, Potter. Just before you go… ‘Never trust anything that thinks for itself, unless you can see where it keeps its brain’,’_ the Hat quoted in a soft murmur quite unlike it. Ruffling its brim against the hands still clutching it against his head – like a strange, leather cuttlefish – it asked, _‘So, where do I keep mine? …Just something to consider.’_

         …

Well, _that_ was chilling…

Harry yanked the creepy hat off his head and thrust it towards his new employer. Slughorn took the preferred thing, returning it to its dull, dusty shelf so it could get back to its yearly quest of making up a silly, explanatory rhyme for the Sorting Feast… or make plans for world domination. Whatever it did all year.

Honestly, he might’ve been a bit more sympathetic to the Hat’s plight – understanding terminal boredom better than most – if it hadn’t turned out to be such an obnoxious piece of headgear. He’d had a grudge against the artefact, already, for making him doubt his position in Gryffindor not once (at his initial Sorting), twice (when it spoke to him second year) but now _three times_. Thanks to life with Dorea Potter, Harry _really_ knew how to hold a grudge, too.

He sneered up at the rotten Hat, while Slughorn exclaimed, “Oh ho! _Right I was –_ I _did_ say you were a toe-in for Celeste’s House,” the professor boasted. The man winked conspiratorially. “I’ve always been an impeccable judge of character, if I do say so myself–”

 _Really?_ Harry thought incredulously. _Didn’t you teach **Riddle**? And somehow **not**  expel him?_

                                                                                                                                                                              “–and look at you! A Hufflepuff, after all. Quite the Hat-stall, mind. At least ten minutes, my boy! It’s a complex man who befuddles our Hat.”

The Potions Master did like to go on. The elder man prattled aimlessly as Harry’s blood was used to seal him to his employment contract, not pausing for breath when the ‘H’ illumination in the Staff Law flooded with gold and yellow and black (affiliating Harry to Helga’s House permanently), nor when they were both dismissed by Headmaster Dippet and left the tower office behind.

He and Slughorn were soon heading down an obscure flight of stairs, surreptitiously located behind a Tudor tapestry, which looked almost too narrow to admit anyone over the age of thirteen – let alone the broad-chested Potions Master. To Harry’s relief, as they approached the gap began to widen, silent and smooth, with no audible shifting of stone against itself, unlike Charring Cross Road entrance to Diagon. Just as the two of them had passed through and down the steps beyond, popping out onto what appeared to be the third-floor Charms Corridor, something seemed to occur to Harry’s guide.

“How did you get in, Hadrian?” Slughorn asked, glancing Harry over as if he were likely bearing some sort of answer in his dress. When nothing could be deducted from that alone, the man suggested, “Apparation, broomstick? Any luggage?”

Trying to surreptitiously refamiliarise himself with the current position of the castle’s corridors – not that there was much point, seeing as they all shifted semi-regularly – Harry’s response was tepid. Paying Slughorn little thought, his eyebrows rose slightly as he spotted a wide, shallow-stepped staircase curving upwards and out of sight. He didn’t recognise that from the good old days, creeping through this general area in the middle of the night, up to no good.

“Oh, no,” he replied distractedly, mind replaying the last minute’s chatter on fast-forward, “I came by carpet… I left my luggage in the Coach House.” Here, Harry stopped his assessment of the castle – walking altogether, in fact – tuning Sughorn back in and asking quite seriously, _”I hope that was okay?”_

More than that, he hoped the charms on the old Coach House hadn’t started deteriorating yet – by the nineties they were all but gone – lest his luggage wander off. Fuck if his mother wouldn’t skin him alive for losing some of the heirlooms she’d insisted he bring along! After all, the Blacks _were_ known for doing nasty shit like that to enemies – they even had a habit of tanning the results to make morbid wall hangings…

Harry’s wandarm twitched.

Slughorn beamed. “Of course it is, my boy. I shall just have a house elf pop down to retrieve it.” The jovial man ambled around a corner, continuing, “Little point bringing it up before you were Sorted, of course. Now we know whereabouts in the castle you will be housed.”

“Whereabouts, Master Slughorn?” Harry queried, tossing thoughts of unpleasant skin-tanning-Blacks aside.

“Oh, don’t call me that now, my boy,” Slughorn insisted, sounding in actuality very pleased Harry was treating him so reverently. “We are all friends here, are we not? I would rather you call me _Horace_ – formality gives me a funny tummy, you know…”

Seemed more likely it was a combination of luxurious foods and the so-called traditional uisge beatha that gave Slughorn an iffy stomach; even so, Harry agreed to the man’s request for the second time in as many meetings.

The Potions Master went right on talking like his new apprentice hadn’t opened his mouth. “So, I suspect the elves will want a few minutes to get your effects situated in one of the available staff suites. Mercifully, they will likely not be in the Deep Dungeons. My own rooms are located down there and, I’m woe to say, there’s _far_ to little sunlight. I can’t recall the last time I was granted daylight before breakfast…

“Before we’re to that, though, it is high time to present you to your new colleagues! They know to expect you. Surely, they have all congregated in the Staff Room, hoping to get a good look at you!”

Lovely. Just what he needed right now. A bunch of busybodies – and Dumbledore, who was probably _head_ busybody – picking him apart.

They took a slow pace, Slughorn as unhurried as ever and an uneager Harry traipsing along half a step behind the other man. Despite his future-familiarity with the castle, most the shortcuts and turnings the Potions Master headed along were new, far as Harry was concerned; they would have shifted and erased themselves a thousand times over by the time he got to first-year. From the third-floor Charms Corridor, they slid through a too-narrow, zigzagging passage–

                                                        “ _If anyone comes the other way, one must back up to the other end of the passage. Rarely used, this one. Students call it the Needle,”_ Slughorn informed him, jocosely adding, _“More than one has exceeded his seam allowance and found himself jammed in the narrowest stretch of the passage. Had to get a team of goblins in to carve the last girl out with pickaxes. Terribly uncouth, goblins… kept jeering at her.”_

                –descending and climbing again to emerge in a part of the castle Harry only briefly explored when younger – no classes were held nearby.

As they proceeded through the halls, Harry couldn’t fail to notice that, even as homely as he found the castle in the future, it felt exponentially more so nowatimes. Everywhere was brightly lit by heavy, golden candelabras and the torch brackets were untarnished; a pleasant scent of summer drifted through open windows; and, despite the lack of students, no echoes hung on the air, there was no feeling of… _loneliness_  (for lack of a better term). When he came here and the castle emptied at Easter half-term, it left a certain… _void_ behind, like the castle didn’t know what to do with itself during those weeks of reduced population. Here – _now_ – it wasn’t like that.

They turned into a wide hallway Harry thought he half-recognised as having passed through, trying to find a shorter route to North Tower; out the window, a swipe of grey-blue lake lent credence to his guess. Even here, the atmosphere was lighter. Perhaps it was because of the long, red and gold and blue woven carpets lining the centre of the hall, instantly reminding Harry of Koschey.

He could hardly help comparing the two institutions – Hogwarts and Koschey.

When first stepping through the doors of L’Académie de Koschey des arts magique for the first time, he assessed it as little like Hogwarts (the only magical school he’d previously attended). For one, from just the outside Koschey was fastidiously appointed, with a wide, Rococo façade – a palatial Front House built for formal function and housing the establishment’s populace. For another thing, the castle beyond the Front House was, even though close to Hogwarts’ size, too bright in its presentation by the Alban school’s standards; Koschey’s older towers were rendered and painted in a mix of whites and seafoam-greens, the newer parts sheer alabaster marble.

Different again, the Main House – as the castle was known – was where all of Koschey’s classes were and where research was conducted. The Russian school separated study and personal, day to day life in a way Hogwarts never tried to; there, it was expected students and staff put academic pursuits behind them when not in the Main House, making it taboo for those interests to chase you across the threshold of the living quarters. Apparently, blowing up cauldrons in your dorm was rude.

Harry remembered finding if hard to adjust to the way Koschey, unlike the grandiose but largely unpopulated Hogwarts, was home to thousands of students, staff and apprentices at any one time. Wizards poured in from across Nordic Europe and European Russia to study at L’Académie de Koschey, where numbers at Hogwarts were on a more local scale, rarely coming from further afield than Lyonesse or Cork. Hogwarts always seemed mostly empty space…

Now, treading its corridors for the first time in years, the castle actually felt substantial… _full_.

Slughorn herded Harry past numerous open doors leading into classrooms going unused in the future. Presently, they seemed to be set-up and dust-free, waiting warmly, like the students were just off for lunch in the Great Hall. There were other rooms with small lounge areas, too, and study desks sat beside bookshelves, occupying alcoves and mezzanines. When you added these things to all the carpets, rugs and the brilliant midday sun… Hogwarts became a revelation.

It was very satisfying to see the school as cheerful and lived-in as Koschey. Harry didn’t really know what he expected but definitely hadn’t thought the castle would be so different from the one he knew and loved. As much as he grew extremely attached to Hogwarts back in the day (because, then, it was the only place he belonged), he often found it odd – and mildly unsettling – to have only a few hundred students in such a large building. What was the need for all that space?

Knowing the sprawling rooms and hallways of the school were far more utilised in the past, solved something of a mystery. It grew clear the ‘dark times’ Hagrid talked about back on that first day (when Harry still wasn’t sure he believed he was a wizard, that it wasn’t some joke of the Dursleys) had been _very_ dark and, it seemed, _bloody_. Only a truly horrific war could decimate the local wizarding population to the point whole wings of Hogwarts – the largest but hardly the _only_ school in the Isles – were shut off, unneeded.

And sweet Morgana, he had all that to come.

For a moment, the weight of the probable thirty-five years between now and Voldemort’s defeat pressed down on him, crushing his heart back into his chest. _Holy shit_ , it was going to be bad… And if there was something to best the Melancholy for, it was taking the fight back to Riddle.

Not yet, though. Too soon. Right now, killing the burgeoning Voldemort would be cold murder, pure and simple. Myrtle was currently the psycho's only victim… and he wasn’t even sure that hadn’t been a bit of an accident, by all accounts.

      Not yet.

He and Slughorn now trod down a flight of wide, sweeping steps, approaching a low hum of voices like bees or a thunderstorm in the distance. Passing a potted tree that looked a bit big to be indoors, they stepped out into a wide gallery; diamond-leaded windows lined the opposite wall all the way to each end – both distant. After a moment of complete disorientation, he realised whereabouts they were.

Harry had only ever seen this particular part of the castle from the outside, both from the ground and while flying. He’d been over it several times, always glancing curiously into the open archways jutting out from the rest of this face of the castle, like somebody just decided to put up a new, boxy building into the side of the higgledy-piggeldy swarm of towers and jagged cliffs. He never landed in the quietly crumbling courtyard, despite having wanted to stop and explore – offer Hogwarts solace in her dereliction – on more than one occasion.

From the inside, the gallery was marble-floored and adorned with landscapes along the non-windowed wall, though two matching portraits sat at the thin spaces either end. The wizarding equivalent of conservatory furniture filled the room, wicker and tied-cusion couches and armchairs clustered around small tables, filled with staff members Harry tried to place from his own school days… None of them were familiar, though. He supposed almost all staffing would change between now and the nineties; not that surprising, given the upcoming bloodfest they would all have to endure.

Slughorn led him amidst the chattering wizards and witches. Many of them too-carefully continued what they were doing, pretending to ignore that there was a newcomer while giving him furtive glances out the corners of their eyes. Most, though, unabashedly peered up at him with open curiosity, itching to ge their teeth into the fresh meat. They shouldn’t be so excited – once Dumbledore got his pound of flesh, Harry would crumble… or loose fyre. One of the two.

Oh well… couldn’t say Slughorn didn’t warn him.

The Potions Master’s head tilted back a bit, chest puffing out and behind counterbalancing him in a way that made him look, absurdly, like an emperor penguin trying to attract a mate. The attention of the room was on him, the floor _his_ , and the man revelled in it.

“May I offer you a beverage, Heir Potter?” the man asked loudly, momentarily overcoming his alleged-hatred of formality. “Perhaps a sweet tea or iced juice?”

Sighing on the inside and thinking he almost might have well just gone back to Natasha, Harry agreed, “If that’s okay, Horace?”

Slughorn’s eyes gleamed. “Of course, of course! I shall just put an order in to the elves.”

A few minutes later saw Harry perched awkwardly at a table almost precisely in the centre of the room, clutching a glass of well-iced, reddish juice like a lifeline. Testing it tentatively, he decided it was… _something_ and raspberry. Not bad at all.

The attention was less welcome.

His new employer lounged in the chair beside him, a poorly-concealed energy spinning around the man, suggesting he was just waiting for the staff to start in on their questioning. For his part, Harry looked over all the people present, wondering why there seemed to be so many… Surely they couldn’t _all_ be staff? There were at least three times as many witches and wizards here than taught all the future-courses combined. Were there more courses in this time? Was it just because more students needed multiple professors for each student? And for that matter, how on Earth did they all fit at the Staff Table?

Among the faces was no McGonagall or Sprout, Flitwick, Hagrid or Trelawney (the last was a relief)… Harry hadn’t really expected them – fifty years was a long time and most the professors he remembered had actually been pretty young. He _did_ spy a very youthful Sinistra dozing out on the terrace, and a man he guessed might be a pre-death Binns… It was hard to tell if it really was the awful History Professor, mainly because Harry hadn’t ever seen him in anything but slightly-transparent monochrome.

Nobody else was particularly familiar. He saw some red hair, that might mark someone related to the Weasleys, next to black curls that made him think of Sirius. His eyes glossed over robes of myriad shades and styles, then passed over someone that made something horrible and cold tighten around his neck like a noose…

   He froze.

A tug in his spine made Harry realise his sudden trepidation wasn’t a noose or any actual magical phenomena, or even the Dumbledore-apprehension that had been coiled around his spine all morning, like a tripwire ready to blow; it was all his muscles tensing, body preparing to get away from this table… push back his chair and bolt… _just get the hell out this room_ …

      His breath misted like on a midwinter’s day.

Slughorn noticed his change in posture. Following Harry’s gaze, the man said, “Ah yes, that is Julius, Professor of Ancient Runes… Nobody’s quite sure where _he_ studied – certainly not Hogwarts or Beauxbatons…”

Ignoring his better instincts, Harry stared at this _Julius_.

Fuck, nobody that tall, spindly and menacing studied anywhere apart from Scholomance, the alma-mater of men like Gateman Colina. As the pale man looked up from his notebook, brightly silver eyes piercing flesh right down to bone, Harry decided he’d keep his suspicions about the man’s schooling to himself. Even so, he had to struggle against the urge to grab a mirror to confirm to himself whether the creepy professor was fext.

“Big hit with the ladies, that one,” the Potions Master commented uncomfortably, “though, I’ve never had much idea as to why…”

Perhaps because unnatural-fext were beautiful to the opposite sex and generally repugnant to their own. This Julius’ alleged luck with women was another clue. Harry racked up everything pointing to the man’s undeadness, mentally vowing to reöpen his old study on muggle weaponry’s failure to work around high concentrations of magic – no glass projectile could cut through fext like a bloody bullet would.

Seeming glad to be a good distance across the room from the disturbing, curled form of the Professor of Ancient Runes, Slughorn turned Harry’s attention to a small group of ladies at a nearby table, who were chittering merrily as they slowly ate through a large sponge cake.

He was unprecedentedly eager for the distraction when Slughorn suggested introducing him. Harry downed his drink and rose smoothly, careful not to show his back to the fext.

“Now, these fine ladies are Missus Otherhaus, Myron’s wife–” Slughorn gestured to a thin witch with too-long robes and an upturned nose “–Madam Leicht, the school nurse, and her apprentice Miss Pomfrey–” the former was a stern-looking woman with a tight, grey bun, where the latter was a surprisingly young Madam Pomfrey, trussed up tight in a blue summer dress “–and, last but never least or forgotten, Madam Niska, our Elvaseer – she’s in charge of the schools elves.”

Each woman gave a short greeting, Mmes Niska and Leicht’s wildly different, the former offering a warm hug and the latter’s, similarly to Mrs Otherhaus, consisting of a firm handshake. Miss Pomfrey – future dominatrix of Hogwarts – was giving him the once over; his stomach turned as, apparently liking what she saw well enough, the woman graced Harry with a bright, Lockhartesque smile. _Hell no!_ Not in a million, bajillion years! There was no way he would ever get himself involved with a witch who was all set to turn into an uptight, domineering nurse, no matter _how_ pretty and normal she looked right now.

While Pomfrey’s eyes lingered on him hopefully, Mrs Otherhaus was giving Slughorn a telling off:

                        “…not my husband, you _know that_ , Horace. Myron’s my _lover_.” The affronted witch turned to Harry, correcting the Potions Master’s previous statement. “It’s _Mizz Nott_. That’s what it was before Daddy dearest sold me off to old Tillyman – and that’s what it remains.”

Slughorn frowned like he was aware of what Ms Nott said but purposely forgot for the purposes of this introduction. In the Isles, it was still scandalous for an unmarried woman to openly air her bedding; Harry was not offended in the least – in Kitezh doing so was practically _compulsory_.

After a brief, remarkably _un_ apologetic apology to Ms Nott, Slughorn asked, “And where is dearest Celeste?”

“Down helping Silvanus with this year’s intake of fwoopers. Fool’s having problems keeping the things quiet.”

“Yes, well,” piped up Nurse Pomfrey, “he’s been having trouble with his charms ever since that malaclaw got his pinky over Yule… I think he was more annoyed to lose his wager on the Cannons than to lose the finger…” Despite the frippish giggle at the end, she sounded a bit put out the man lost his finger at all – probably thought she should’ve been able to fix it.

From the murmurous agreement rising between the staff, Harry assumed this Silvanus was quidditch obsessed and that his colleagues thought he was quite mad.

“Don’t know why we should expect better, really,” Madam Leicht said waspishly. “His lovely mother _did_ run off with that puréed pumpkin from the Colonies.”

“Ariel?” Madam Niska – a slightly overweight, black woman with an impossibly kind face – asked in surprise.

“Yes,” Ms Nott replied. “He’s her son – thought you’d know…”

Slughorn turned to Harry looking, considering the way the man was always gossiping, hypocritically exasperated.

“Those four will be occupied for some time, I fear,” Slughorn said. “It may be best to, shall we say, give them the slip.”

Looking back at the purple-clad witch gossiping with the nurses and the Elvaseer, Harry was forced to admit retreat might be wise. He didn’t think abandoning the group would be hard, seeing as they were engrossed in their new topic of conversation and Madam Niska was absently placing a fresh slice of cake on her plate.

Slughorn said something in that winding, distant way he tended towards, gesticulating with one hand; he drew Harry’s attention to the other side of the room and the ton of people the man wanted to parade him in front of.

It was an endless reel of names and faces, reminding him of those dreadful holiday slideshow Natasha liked (living, presumably, vicariously through her subjects):

There was Professor Penrose, a short, stocky man with brown hair and eyes, who waxed poetic about his subject of expertise, Muggledom. Next came the current defence instructor, Professor Picardy, a towering man with scarce, greying hair and irises the same shade as grotty mud. Then the Academic Dark Arts Professor, a robust mess of auburn curls with an oddly deep voice, named Evan Mercia (Harry noted the man carefully, as he was of the First of the Thirteen).

Lithe and blonde, with bright blue eyes, the first female professor he met turned out to be the Charms Mistress, Evaline Monroe, who managed to keep him talking for a full fifteen minutes with her captivating voice (if he hadn’t been so familiar with what the veela draw felt like, he would have thought her one). Eventually, Professor Beery butted in, idly plucking stray twigs out his hair and digging dirt from under his nails, going on about ‘harmless’ tentacula – guess he was the resident Herbologist.

Introductions spiralled on.

Apprentice Greengrass was a pixiesque girl with very dark hair, extraordinarily green eyes and ink stains on her fingers, working as an assistant to Hogwarts’ Arithmancer. Professor Mason was slight, blond and nervous, acting as a student adviser who, Harry would guess from the sickening way the pair gravitated towards one another unconsciously, was in a relationship with Greengrass.

Then, completely blindsiding him, Slughorn introduced Miss Pince… Yes, it really was her! There, surprisingly young and lissom, sipping daintily at a glass of juice and fingering a bookmark with an only _mildly_ stern expression, was the future Head Librarian. He silently swore to never cross her – he recalled her nasty temper.

It was information overload.

He still scarcely believed how many staff members Hogwarts had of now. It was so much more like Koschey than it would become in the future, when it would have wilted away until only a few subjects and professors remained, hardly an apprentice amongst them. There were so many names and faces in here, many family members of faculty, Harry didn’t have a hope in Hell of remembering them all.

Through the chaos of excitable – and some antagonistic or dismissive – Hogwarts residentees, his mind kept returning to one thing over and over again: _He’s not here, he’s not here…_

      Dumbledore wasn’t in the Staff Room.


	9. Chapter 9

_posted: 2018-02-12_  
_edits: fixed italic mishap_

  

_**It is very unlikely** _

**– Harry read halfheartedly –**

_**that our esteemed Tsar will ever deign** _  
_**summon you into his direct presence, though he may grace many a party in which**_  
_**you are expected to be in attendance.** If you are, against your bearing, summoned by_  
_His Imperial Highness, it is of vital politeness that you call him only by title and never da-_  
_re disagree with him; you are but a subject and he of the ancient Royal House of this Bo-_  
_untiful Earth, appointed by the forgotten gods themselves to watch over the world's peop-_  
_les and keep the peace best he can._

_The correct way to introduce yourself to His Imperial Highness is–_

Uninterested, Harry rolled his eyes and flicked on through the dusty etiquette text.

_Avoiding Insult_

_There are many ways in which casual misthought can cause the greatest offence and le-_  
_ssen one's social standing, no matter the flag of their blood. For instance, where by the_  
_culture of the Far East it would be considered rude to–_

                    he skimmed down the page until coming to:

                          _... never excuse yourself from conversation if it means leaving a lady_  
_alone; never leave the company of an enemy unless with an ally; never refuse a request_  
_to dance made to you by a lady of lesser station; you must not think to walk unescorted w-_  
_ith a lady unless–_

God, this was dull. Why on Earth did Jameson think he needed to read this crap? It didn't even say anything about local customs... It was all about what you could and shouldn't do in the Magical Russias... and it was all about two-hundred years out of date. Then again, he supposed that was pretty new in comparison to some aspects of life in the Wizarding World, which didn't exactly adapt well with the times... Plus, it was the forties – even if things seemed looser in the future, perhaps the rate of Muggle advances had caused greater changes in the life of magicals than they'd had time to do at this point. Or maybe Russia was just weird. Or the purebloods were, anyway.

Slumping until his forehead rested on the at-least thousand-page volume, Harry groaned. Did he  _really_ have to remember all this?

Twenty-minutes later he found a section entitled  _On Courting_  and pursed his lips in vague interest. Guess it was time to see how one went about getting a date in the Magical World.

 

_–excerpts from 'Etiquette of the Ages', read by Harry Potter, mid-winter 1940_

 

 

 

_june _  
reäcquaintance with company

 

 

**THE CROWDING HOGWARTS ****faculty poked and prodded at Harry like he were the new baby of the family, cooing and asking him all manner of invasive, personal questions.** Harry did his best to field them without growling and telling them all to sod off to hell already, though the urge to escape – as fast as his feet would let him and never looking back – was near-overpowering. He didn’t because one) it would be rude enough to put him at odds with a bunch of witches and wizards he might have to spend years with, and two) he didn’t have any quarters yet, so there wasn’t anywhere particular to go. 

He carefully didn’t mention Dumbledore to the other staff – not in praise or condemnation and not to find out where he was. Probably off ruining a perfectly decent bill’s chances of passing through the Summer Session of the Wizengamot. It was the sort of thing he was known for.

Nobody said anything about the venerated professor currently missing from their number. They were more interested in _Harry_ , to his consternation. Half an hour after coming into the Staff Room, he was catching his breath out on the terrace.

“They bother you,” a drawling, rasping voice said from behind him, drawing vowels out oddly and cutting off his _th_ s.

The hair on the back of Harry’s neck rose violently.

He turned from the parapet to find the narrow, spiky form of the Professor of Ancient Runes pinning him with a strange look. Up and down his arms, Harry’s skin prickled uncomfortably and he restrained a shudder. How the Hell hadn’t he felt the man coming?

Unwilling to outwardly display his extreme wariness of this professor, Harry forced himself to shrug as loosely as possible. “Just not used to having so many people about.”

“Ah, yes,” the Runes Professor said, tucking one hand into the pocket of his long, greyish robes – they seemed to float at the bottom, as if in water.

Up close, the fext’s eyes were nearer the colour of mercury than silver – he was probably just as poisonous.

“I imagine you would have grown unused to a crowd. You have been… how do we say? _Recluse_. You have been recluse since the war’s end. Where _have_ you been hiding yourself?”

The creepy man didn’t look like he gave a damn about the answer – Harry knew better.

“Oh, just at home. I’m afraid I was a bit out of sorts by the end – needed a nice, long holiday.”

“Indeed?”

“Well, between you and me, Nurmengard’s facilities weren’t really up to scratch,” Harry said, a slightly mocking quality to his voice. Bluffing a grin – a rakish, _sharp_ show of teeth that made the outer edges of the Professor’s lips furl in response – he added, “The brochure said it was a four-star spa resort – but the rooms left a lot to be desired and the food was abominable. Shody weather and no tips for the ladies, either. Bloody banshees, the lot of them.”

The other man smiled tightly in return, eyes guarded. Unfurling the hand previously gathered in his robe, he introduced, “Professor Julius Saakadze.”

“Hadrian Potter,” Harry stated, reluctantly taking the fext’s hand and repressing a shudder at the cold, clammy flesh under his own. Then, leagues against his normal character but in much the pompous vein of the day, he tacked on, “Earl Avolonya, Marquess of Cheltenham.”

      As if that helped anything.

If Harry’s skin was slightly chilly to the touch, the Professor of Ancient Runes’ was _glacial_. Even so, Saakadze’s hand twitched under his own and the man withdrew it as quick as possible, appearing disconcerted. Harry knew why. Regretfully, the other man didn’t make an excuse to leave – he looked like he wanted to, though; Saakadze’s presence wasn’t least wanted and Harry felt a bit better for having turned the tables somewhat. The fext wanted to make him uncomfortable – now he repaid the sentiment.

Where was a good set of Bells when you needed them? Oh yeah, somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic. Top decision, that.

“You teach Ancient Runes – think that’s what Horace said?” Harry asked, not wanting to talk to the man even though it was unavoidable.

“I do,” was Saakadze’s curt response. “You intend to teach potions, I suppose. Have you interest in runes?”

Again, he didn’t sound curious about Harry’s answer, like these pleasantries were just the telltale darkening of the sky and bite in the wind before the rain came. No doubt, a deluge of deeper questions lurked behind the man’s teeth. Fext were known for, more than being Dead things deserving of nothing in the world of life and light, their insidiousness.

Trying to lock the conversation directly onto a target Saakadze could speak on for hours (as any professor usually would on their chosen specialisation), Harry contrarily replied, “Oh _yes_ , I think they’re fascinating. Unfortunately,” he laughed self-deprecatingly, “I’m not much cop at the backwork, though I’m decent on practical applications.”

“Warding?”

Harry pursed his lips in wry amusement. _“Not exactly,”_ he drawled good-naturedly, hoping to throw the fext off-balance.

He didn’t bother elaborating on the ‘practical applications’ of runes he knew best. Gryffindors had a burning heart – he always was rather successful in making things go _boom_.

One of the other man’s eyebrows rose, though he didn’t comment on the possible nature of Harry’s runic exploits.

Instead, Saakadze patronised, “I am afraid the underwork is largely arithmantic in its nature, though undoubtedly there is a certain amount of instinct to the runes themselves. Each year, I receive a handful of students who excel in learning languages and interpreting meaning, who yet fail entirely to grasp the more complex, precise nature of numerical relationships as they apply to runes in weave.”

Spellnet broken – spellnet go _kaboom_. Seemed pretty simple to him. Still, runes clearly _was_ a distracting subject for Julius Saakadze… Harry wouldn’t forget.

“Perhaps you’d have better luck with muggleborns?” he suggested to Saakadze, plenty happy to keep the discussion on a topic Harry was comfortable with – at least until he could reasonably escape the freak. “I don’t think lots of Hogwarts students go to primary school – pretty much all tutors just skirt around calculations. Wizards and maths aren’t exactly bosom buddies.”

“Are you implying _you_ attended a muggle schooling facility?” the Professor of Ancient Runes slowly over-enunciated, tone dripping with disdain.

Harry was rather forcibly reminded of Snape. His wandhand twitched.

“And if I _was_?” he challenged, brow furrowed in disgust at Saakadze’s obvious hate for muggles. “But no,” he qualified, “one of my tutors used to work at muggle schools sometimes. He had a lot to say about them. It _does_ seem stupid so many useful subjects are designated as muggle-only – maths, physics, _world geography_ , gordian economics…”

Saakadze’s mouth became a maw of deep dislike as Harry trailed off – a gaping chasm into foul darkness, sharp teeth glinting above and below like handaxe stalagmites and -tites. Somehow, he doubted the fext – magical through and through, if the guess was correct – liked the implication behind Harry’s words.

“It’s impressive,” Harry added dryly, satisfied by ruffling the thing’s feathers, “the Wizarding Isles manages to function at all.”

Why did he want to annoy this creepy professor so much? Most people’s innate good sense was to back away from a man like this. Saakadze had a strong stench of decayed familiarity about him. Fext – the man wasn’t human at all… or completely alive, for that matter.

Harry knew more about that state of being than he wanted to.

“Of course,” Saakadze returned, seeming to find some ammo, “the _Isles_ was the only country in Europe with the mind to stay out that little scuffle with that _Dark_ Lord. The rest of Europe’s in chaos, is it not?”

Harry’s eyes narrowed. “The Isles was barely targeted by Grindelwald. He was interested in the _profitable_ mainland.”

Or, in other words, the Isles was backwards arsed enough Grindelwald hardly needed to bother doing anything. The Ministry’s muggle legislation was so outdated it was technically legal to _own_ a muggle like a house-elf. Harry didn’t know of any modern instances but the option was there in the law. Thank fuck most wizards seemed to have forgotten – shame they still thought it was okay to go about erasing memories all over the place.

“And yet, the man who defeated him – a Hogwarts professor and valued friend, no less – was Islen. If the education in Europe is, as you imply, _superior_ , why was _your_ Dark Lord problem left for him to clean up?”

He bit the insides of his cheeks to avoid rising to Saakadze’s jibes. Besides, Harry _had_ drawn first blood.

“Grindelwald’s forces numbered in the tens of thousands – sympathisers in the hundreds of thousands,” Harry educated as calmly as possible. “That’s not even counting the muggle war surrounding the whole lot. Bullets kill wizards as well as muggles.”

_Probably wouldn’t kill **you** , _Harry thought with disgust. _Glass, perhaps. Glass or a nice, sharpish fruit stone or just **anything** unexpected._ There were stories but the fext were so rare that information wasn’t well confirmed. _Glass bullets._ That was best bet.

“Any wizard foolish enough to be fatally wounded with a muggle instrument is good riddance for the rest of us. And I ask again, exactly _how_ , pray, is the educational standard in Europe better than that here, if an entire continent can be subdued at the whim of _one man_? Where was it you attended? Koshchei, was it?”

He nodded tightly and something like triumph shone in Saakadze’s eyes. Harry felt like ripping them out.

“And,” the thing asked nastily, gratified smile twisting his face even further into the realms of the horrific, “the courses at Koshchei are so much better than those at Hogwarts? They must be truly magnificent for the _great Hadrian Potter_ to extol them so!”

Something pissed off gnawed at the insides of Harry’s ribs. This bastard was the forties version of Snape. For a disturbing second, he wondered if Julius Saakadze could be the Dungeon Bat’s father or grandfather, then dismissed the idea because Dead creatures, with a few noteworthy and gruesome exceptions, weren’t well known for their reproductive capabilities – thank goodness.

“Come,” the Professor of Ancient Runes cajoled, “tell me of Koshchei. It is in the wilds of Russia, I hear…”

For the next half an hour, Harry wondered how, in the name of all that was unholy, he lost control of the conversation so completely! He hoped to stick to nice, safe, would-you-mind-terribly-if-I-stabbed-you-now topics but, somehow, a thinly veiled argument about the war had left him deflecting queries about his alma-mater for the second time today. And Saakadze’s enquires were definitely less wholesome than the already-questionable Slughorn’s.

Harry couldn’t (and even if he _could_ , he wouldn’t – not to a thing like Saakadze) disclose Koschey’s precise location, much to the Professor’s ire. Nor could he be bothered to explain the school’s syllabus in depth, point blank refused to go into the nature of the establishment’s concealments and was disinclined to give the names of any of his former classmates… The oath binding him to protect the school’s secrets didn’t actually cover all these aspects of life at Koschey but… one) fuck this fext bastard, two) he didn’t like small talk of any kind, false or not, and three) fuck this fext bastard… preferably all the way to the Ninth and beyond.

Even now actively trying, extracting himself from this thing’s company was proving difficult.

“So, you can tell me nothing of this glorious establishment you attended?” the Ancient Runes Professor surmised acerbically, dry lips curled up like dead leaves. “How very disappointing.”

Harry levelled the man with a flat stare. “Like I said, students at Koschey are bound to protect her secrets, not unlike Durmstrangs. Even Beauxbatons and the Towers of Supe insist on secrecy, though their locations are widely known.”

“We here at Hogwarts feel such an egotistical level of secrecy unnecessary. It has always seemed… conceited, no? Other schools consider themselves of such importance they hide their very locations, as if fearing other institutions care to bother with them.”

“It’s tradition,” Harry snapped, patience worn dangerously thin. “A holdover from times when magical nations went to war every other month and on Tuesdays, too, just for a bit of fun. Days when scared muggles might actually manage to do a fair bit of damage to any unwary sod they stumbled across.”

“I don’t see how–” Saakadze began, eyes narrow.

At that moment, though, Slughorn bustled over from whatever conversation he was having on the other side of the room. Earlier, Harry wouldn’t have thought he’d be happy to see the braggart, but he was damn joyous now. Timely interruptions, indeed. _Over_ timely, actually.

Bringing a half-drunk cup of tea with him, Slughorn cheerfully said, “My dear Julius, I do hope you’re not terrifying my new apprentice. He looks a mite flustered.”

Slughorn laughed jovially but the sound was forced and he looked, honestly, like he’d rather be somewhere else himself.

“Not at all, Horace,” Saakadze said blithely. “I was merely making enquiries into the specifics of Mister Potter’s schooling. Koshchei sounds a most marvellous place.”

“Oh, indeed?” Slughorn nodded, looking curiously between Harry and his colleague.

Harry nipped the man’s thoughts in the bud. “Yes, but–” he reminded firmly, “as I was just telling Saakadze here, I’m bound to protect the school’s secrets.”

The Potions Master bobbed his head. “Yes, the old enchantments are often so unforgiving – tradition is tradition. There seems little need for it in these times of peacefulness between our nations… but there you have it…”

_Peacefulness?_ Where had Slughorn been for the past thirty-odd years?

Near lost for words at his new employer’s careless blunder, Harry managed only to bite out, “Tradition is all we have,” before falling silent again.

Slughorn frowned heavily, apparently either not understanding the point of Harry’s statement, or the reason for his sour tone. The man did what Harry figured he did with all things he didn’t get – ignored it and put it out of mind.

Instead, the Potions Master announced, “I confess, I find myself more aflutter with curiosity at the thought of your hometown – Kitezh, yes? The Impossible City! How often I have wished to visit your wonderful nation and see the city. But alas! I have not been able…” Seeming hopeful, Slughorn added, “Perhaps you may put in a good word for me, Hadrian, my boy? I should dearly love to see the Impossible City before these old bones become too stiff for travel, this heart too old for such adventure!”

Harry reluctantly conceded he could ‘put in a good word’ for Professor Slughorn, causing the man to belie his misleading comments about old-age by basically _bouncing_ on the balls of his feet. Over the tedious course of correspondence made with the Potions Master (while Harry was being as difficult as possible about his relocation to Hogwarts), he gave the impression of a man who liked to keep his friends close and enemies far away… Slughorn’s friends being anyone who offered him more comfort or implied exclusivity in life, his enemies anyone who might threaten those comforts.

“Very good, my boy,” Slughorn enthused, a stony-faced Saakadze looking on. “And now I’m afraid, dear Julius, I have to steal Hadrian away.”

Inside, the part of Harry most interested in flight over fight did a bit of a jig.

“Now, Hadrian,” the Potions Master ventured, turning Harry from Saakadze and beginning to manoeuvre him out the room. Head bent over and voice at a whisper, he said, “Madam Niska tells me the elves have moved your effects into a nice room near the Hufflepuff Dormitories…”

The Puff Dorms turned out to be near a painting of a bowl of fruit that looked like it wanted to eat him. They were in the basement – the first underground level, above the dungeons – which was decidedly less wet and gloomy than the floors below. The basement was built all of imported lime- and sandstone, soft yellow and white, warm with the glow of ever-burning torches in gleaming silver brackets.

“Now, the Hufflepuff Common Room is here – you place your hand in the mouth of this badger to gain access. You shouldn’t have need to go in there… but it’s best, for safety, all staff members are aware of how to enter the dorms in case of emergency. I will take you to the entrances of the other dorms once you are situated.”

Feigning ignorance, Harry commented, “The other Houses are Slytherin, Gryffindor and Ravensclaw?”

“Ravenclaw… but yes. Ravenclaw and Gryffindor each have towers near the top of the castle. My own students, the Slytherins, have rooms down in the lower dungeons, adjacent to the lake. The windows look out into the water – in summer, the shafts of sunlight through the lake really are quite lovely,” the professor said devotedly. “It’s frightfully frigid in wintertime, to my regret. You’ll be far more comfortable up here, I believe, than you would have been down in the dungeons with me.”

Professor Slughorn led Harry on past the sandstone badger apparently capable of letting him into the Hufflepuff Commons. It was funny – in three years at Hogwarts he was allowed into Gryffindor Tower (as a rightful member) and got himself into the Slytherin Dorms under Polyjuice. Only now, a decade later – or five decades earlier, if your brain didn’t mind twisting like that – was he going to find out where the other Houses’ dorms were. He just needed to get into Ravenclaw Tower for a full set.

Turning right down a wide corridor, Slughorn’s purposeful steps stopped at a seemingly blank stretch of wall. The man ran his hands across the perfectly smooth brick; in the wake of his palms, Harry noticed a raised pattern forming.

“You just run your hands from here,” Slughorn explained, indicating the bottom of a slightly discoloured brick, “to here – and then…”

The raised stone, snaking after the man’s hand like a serpent after a mouse, stilled as it completed a full figure-of-eight. The raised area suddenly depressed, turning inward and sinking into the wall. It almost looked like a set of hand holds.

“Well, give it a push,” Slughorn encouraged, offering Harry space to get at the wall.

Gripping onto the sunken areas with careful fingers, Harry pushed softly on the wall. Miraculously – just like magic, he supposed wryly – the entire wall caved and crumpled, stone shifting and snapping and bending in ways that weren’t possible. No dust rose but, as if not all there, the image of whatever was behind the wall was distorted. Like Kitezh seen through her Sails.

Then it was over.

The whole process only took a moment. After, they were standing in front of a wide open, double-width doorway with chambers beyond. Harry stepped into the materialised rooms and looked around.

It was obvious they were underground – no windows and the walls looked sculpted rather than built. A soft, yellowish carpet was too-warm underfoot, glimmering in that same sickeningly-happy way everything else in the basement seemed to and strange, glowing indents were spaced along the wall in lieu of the usual torches. The ceiling curved, not supported by beams but, again, looking carved out from the earth (how? Limestone wasn’t native to the area?); a large skylight opened up at the ceiling’s pinnacle and, for no reason other than claustrophobia, Harry suddenly felt glad he didn’t go Slytherin and end up stuck in the dungeons-proper.

The rooms were unfurnished, making Harry think the house elves probably chose them not just because of their Hufflepuffy-location but because the whole trunk of shrunken furniture he brought at his mother’s behest; he _had_ wondered what the Hell he’d do with it all, worrying his Shrinking charms would wear off before he worked out where to fit it among the (usually) already well-equipped castle rooms. It was good these chambers were empty. His charms would ear out the next day best case, leaving him with wardrobes, tables and couches all over the place.

His carpet was rolled up in a corner, leaning against the tower of trunks he brought along. A fabric case – stuffed bursting with all the new clothes Dorea foisted on him – sat precariously on top of the pile, making Harry think of a game Dudley used to have called Jenga.

“This is for you,” Slughorn said pointlessly, having followed Harry into the rooms. “The bedroom, lavatory and study are through those, I imagine,” he gestured towards three archways cut into adjacent walls, “and, uh – well… Up here in Hufflepuff the actual _sleeping_ arrangements are a little…unconventional, to say the least.”

Curiosity piqued, Harry followed the Potions Master past the opening to the bathroom and into the bedroom, where what he mistook for a tapestry hung. The tapestry actually turned out to be a yellow curtain cut from extremely thick, heavy fabric, embroidered with a myriad of foreign runes and random waves that made no sense to Harry. Drawing back the curtain, Slughorn allowed him to see the carved crevice it hid.

“As you see, Hufflepuff favours not beds so much as…”

“Sets?” Harry finished humorously, contemplating the idea.

He wondered what the student dorms were like. Rooms of curtains hiding matresses in little burrows, one stacked on top of the other?

Slughorn chortled. “Yes yes, I suppose they could be described as such. I’ve always found it a little bizarre, myself, but to each their own… I trust you will be comfortable enough here? If you feel not, I can have the elves find alterna–”

“This is fine,” Harry insisted, cutting off the man’s sentence. He made a show of looking around again, adding, “Lovely, really. The rooms are great.”

Harry felt, more than saw, the professor nodding behind him.

“Well,” the man said, “I shall let you get your things how you prefer them, then… And I will give you a tour of the potions corridor and a run-down of your duties later?”

“Sure.”

Harry’s eyes did a second sweep of the chambers, darting into every crevice and shadow. He would put his lounge furniture under the skylight, so it felt more like being outside…

“I will, uh, just leave you to settle in, then,” Slughorn repeated, mumbling this time.

When the man left a moment later, Harry barely registered he’d gone.

 

 

 

**Four hours after being given his new rooms, Harry had unpacked and resized all the furniture.** Fullness made the space to look more like a cross between his bedroom and study back at the Château and less like a strange, yellow animal den. He did try to transfigure the sparkly carpet into a more sedate hardwood, like at the manor, but all that happened was it went solid, leaving a sharp, spiky floor too painful to walk on; after removing the carpet completely – burning it, as it rejected vanishment – he moved onto other things. 

The room was a bloody awkward shape, so it was hard to find a piece of wall flat enough to push things like his wardrobe and desk against – mostly, everything ended up free-standing. There were couches and a table under the skylight, like he planned, but the study was too pokey for his sizable desk so he had to put it in open space across from the door to the rest of the castle, squeezing its accompanying chair in the minuscule gap between it and wall. His wardrobe… Well, he did his best to mould it to a flattish bit of wall three feet off the ground in the bedroom; he held it up there with a Permanent Sticking Charm, so if he ever left his position the wardrobe was staying – unless he took the wall with him.

Harry was hot and uncomfortable by the time he was finished arranging furniture and filling the wardrobe – heavy travelling robes weren’t great for indoor physical exertion. Grabbing the first change of clothes he saw, he wandered into the quarters’ attached bathroom.

The room was small but the shower was easily as decent as the one at the Château – miles better than the ones in Gryffindor Tower. Looked like the teachers got all the good stuff, judging by the comfort of his new rooms and the gargantuan size of its fireplace.

The mirror over the sink was much bigger than the one in his own bathroom. As he dressed, his gaze was unwillingly drawn to his stomach; a finger traced the neat, pink mar curling like a snake across what was, otherwise, a pretty decently looked after physique. A childhood of running for your life, followed by years of fighting anyone who looked at him the wrong way, didn’t result in poor body condition – his time in Nurmengard still showed, though, in the loss of muscle tone.

This spectacular scar was a point of contention for Harry, having known the wizard who gave it to him well. He even studied for a Masters in Magical Defence under the man’s tutelage.

One the one hand, he recalled Leuitenant Ewald Bahr: Traitor to the cause of humanists everywhere, a man who called Harry’s team to check in the latter days of the war with a terrific hand of magical destruction and untameable bloodlust. One the other hand was _Professor_ Bahr: The mild-mannered, Lupin-like man who trained his students at Koschey with a gentle wand and encouraging smile. Bahr’s true nature was unknowable. To Harry, the man was, posthumously, both ignoble and meritorious in his doings.

It wasn’t that his once-mentor ended up an enemy that bothered Harry. He understood well enough hundreds of magicals spent the war posted behind enemy lines, there to gather information vital to their cause. What upset him was how his old defence instructor either sold out his beliefs of non-conflict under duress, or his true nature from his own apprentice for years, carefully concealing it beneath a mask of servile, non-combative ideology, rebuking Harry his decision to act in the war under this deceitful guise.

Fuck him.

Master Bahr was either a snivelling coward or a dirty liar – neither sat well with Harry at all.

The scar on Harry’s chest was testament to Bahr’s undeniable skill with battlemagic as well as defence. Some days – not today – the old wound still throbbed coldly, like a frozen snake constricting round his ribs. The Black Magic of the thing was pushed back to safe levels by his healer – a _pushy_ man in general – but not entirely eliminated. It would ache for the rest of his life.

It was hardly his first or only scar – not even his first _curse_ scar. He could still feel the old lightning bolt scar on his forehead, a phantom wound that warmed and cooled with his moods but was no longer visible to the eye. Harry didn’t know why, or exactly _when_ , but the scar had gradually begun to fade after he arrived in the forties… until, one day, without him even noticing, it was just… _gone_.

He supposed it hadn’t been _made_ yet – and wouldn’t until nineteen eighty-one on that awful Samhain night. Though, this train of thought always had him questioning how _he_ existed and hadn’t just… _faded_ , like the scar, seeing as he certainly hadn’t been _made_ yet, either.

No,  _Tom Riddle_ wasn’t yet the monstrous man who tried to kill a toddler for no apparent reason – though he was probably still a massive dickbag, given how the Diary acted. That creepy, talking journal was pretty liberal in its sharing of memories, so he had a good idea what Riddle looked like, even if he hadn’t run across him. Hopefully he wouldn’t – not until the man was surmounted by the monster and Harry wouldn’t feel too bad about showing _him_ what a Killing Curse to the face felt like. 

Riddle was part of the reason Harry – ex boy-who-lived with a grudge to settle – hadn’t kicked up more of a fuss over not coming back to Hogwarts straight away; when he was fourteen, he really thought he might end up attacking the unsuspecting, second-year Riddle in punishment of crimes the boy hadn’t even committed yet. Harry was sure he’d now matured past this problem. Besides… Riddle was of age now – gone from the castle.

Harry could wait. He was good at waiting.

Regardless of his younger-self’s fears over trying to kill a mostly-innocent Tom Riddle, the Potters hasn’t let him back to Hogwarts anyway. The whole family had been terrified one of the legilimense on staff might pick up on Harry’s timetraveller… _ness_ , resulting in Harry getting taken away from them and carted off so the Ministry could study him to try and unlock secrets of the future. Dumbledore, as a Master Legilimens sometimes called on in trials involving particularly heinous criminals, was one person nobody wanted discovering Hadrian Potter’s – and the whole Potter family’s – biggest secret.

Harry was older and stupider now. He’d come to Hogwarts despite the lingering risk. It might not be too bright to thrust himself into the reach of Dumbledore’s welcoming-to-all arms. Not that he’d seen the man yet, seeing as he was conspicuously absent from the Staff Room. Either he was hiding because Harry – proper war veteran – just got here, or he was off messing up someone’s day. Both were plausible.

Old fears of being caught as a time traveller were negligible to Harry, now, overcome by the constant threat of tumbling arse-over-tit into Death and riding those nasty rapids all the way past the Ninth Gate. He was strong enough to fight back, strong enough to Obliviate the bejeesus out of anyone who knew something dangerous to his family, and his mind was so chaotic that only an insane Leglilimens standed a chance of navigating it – the defence of kings. Better to slip away in Hogwarts than at the Chateau, where Dorea and Effie would be forced to watch on, helpless, even at the risk of getting caught up in the worrying web Dumbledore recently began weaving.

The government was in the middle of a tide of spring cleaning and the wave hadn’t crested yet. Just last week, it was announced in the papers that, under Dumbledore’s so-very-sage advice, Oak Road Preparatory wouldn’t be reöpening due to being blasted to shit near the end of the war. It was the only magical day-school in Kent and, as of this September, all of its students were being offered places in Hogwarts.

The closing of Oak Road Prep wasn’t the first important change in the last few months – doubtless, it wouldn’t be the last. There were already whispers, in the Wizengamot and on the Board of Governors, of cutting the Academic Dark Arts class from the Hogwarts curriculum. Harry wasn’t sure how well that would go, having met its professor earlier; Evan Mercia was from the First of the Thirteen, so good luck making _him_ redundant.

These two things were just the tip of the wand… another eight inches came right behind.

Ever since news reached him about the way Grindelwald’s downcall came (or, perhaps, ever since he found out the now-incarcerated warlord used to be _friends_ with his defeater), Harry had been disillusioned with his old headmaster. It didn’t exactly help Dumbledore’s image that he only lifted his wand once Grindelwald stepped on his home turf. Until that point, the future-headmaster just hid away in Hogwarts with his books and muggle confectionary, sending out other wizards to scout and scupper the Good Lord’s plans for him.

Harry hoped the man never got a nice pair of woolly socks ever again. In fact, he meant to see to it.

Tasks for another day, he supposed. Add it to the list.

In the end, Harry chose not to attend dinner in the Great Hall. He decided this was a good idea partially because a house elf came along to offer him a meal in his quarters – guess Slughorn thought he was a slow unpacker – and partially because he didn’t want to be interrogated by most the faculty again. And Dumbledore – it always came back to fucking Dumbledore.

After swallowing down some sort of stew he didn’t actually taste, he bravely ventured out into the halls to find the Potions Master; he couldn’t really be bothered but Harry _had_ already agreed to go get his orders for the next few days. Nothing to be done but doing it. So, he whistled a low tune as he left the basement, heading down into the dungeons – not a cheerful song… Still, his mother would probably say it was a vast improvement over his usual despondency… or that angry phase he went through as a teenager that came with a Slayer backing track (thanks Bill).

Ten minutes later, he was cursing himself for forgetting how unbelievably similar all the dungeon halls looked. It was like a stoney, drippy, phosphorescent-mossy hall of mirrors, with some random trap doors and trick staircases thrown in. Harry had no idea where he was going or, for that matter, where he even was right now! He didn’t have a clue how to get to Slughorn’s rooms or labs from here. He should have brought a map…

Would the Map still work? He’d not looked at it in years – not since realising mapping the Wilderness was not going to happen, no matter how well he thought he understood how the Marauders did it for Hogwarts. 

Worst of all, there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in Hell of him working out _which_ blank stretch of wall concealed his new quarters. So, he couldn’t go forwards, couldn’t go back… and he needed the loo.

Immediately, he gave up hunting for the potions corridor as a bad job; it would be an exercise in futility seeing as he didn’t know where _he_ was and the castle was due to shift itself around so much in the next half a century. If he tried to get to the right bit of the dungeons, he’d probably accidentally end up in some old torture chamber – there were horror stories (mainly told by Fred and George, in truth) of students getting stuck behind unstable wards covering crumbling holding cells, none of which had been used in centuries, and not being found for weeks.

Didn’t sound like much fun, even if he _was_ good at busting wards. He’d seen the insides of enough cells to last a lifetime.

He ended up in the library, several floors above, following a tense detour to Moaning Myrtle’s girls’ lavatory. The blubbery ghost girl hadn’t been in there to tell him off for using the wrong loos, but… the room stank of Death, even through the castle’s extensive wards. Whatever went down during the original Chamber Incident – more than just a simple death, Harry was almost certain – three years wasn’t long enough to erase its mark on the bathroom. 

After around half an hour in the stacks, Hermione-nostalgia was creeping in due to a slowly growing tower of books floating obediently in his wake. Just as _Tomorrow’s Turn: A glimpse into the arithmantical afterlife_ added itself to his pile, Slughorn himself appeared. The man was more stealthy than such a bulky man had any right to be; his arrival, sudden and silent as an assassin, gave Harry a nasty turn.

His wand was trying to dig itself through a delicate spot in his new employer’s shoulder. Harry hadn’t had time to register his own movement, let alone identify the interloper.

Slughorn, with pinched eyebrows that looked out of place on his usually-jovial face, seemed startled by Harry’s over-the-top reaction to his presence. For his part, Harry shakily tucked his wand back away into the loop on his belt, realising he just held his employer-of-only-a-day at wandpoint. Embarrassing.

The elder man coughed awkwardly. “I apologise if I startled you, Hadrian, my dear boy,” the man said abashedly.

Harry was already stammering his way through a poorly thought out, disjointed series of sort-of-apologies and almost-excuses himself.

Slughorn shuffled, informing, “I as just finishing up a letter to old Dogeman Derwent – he’s invited me to come steering down at his reserve in the Lakes, you know, best beasts in the Isles – when I realised how late the hour had grown. I promised you a tour! However, when I called on your chambers it was to find them empty.

“It’s a favourable stir of happenstance that I’ve found you here, for I fear, had you entered the dungeons alone, you would have quickly dizzied. They shift about, you see! Terrible, warrenous place, the dungeons – dangerous to the unwary.”

Far as Harry remembered, they weren’t so great for the _wary_ , either.

“Yet I find you here, with your feet well beneath you! How fortuitous, my lad. Now,” the man began, taking a quick glance down the miscellaneous list of titles floating behind Harry, “what are you up to here?”

Glad it didn’t look like Slughorn was immediately going to boot him out on his arse for his latest idiotic stunt, Harry leapt on the possible conversation topic offered.

“Oh… well, the library here’s rather more… varied than the public lending one. I ran through my family’s collection ages ago. You’ve got some unique texts here, Master Slughorn.”

Butter them up.

“Horace – Horace, please.”

“Sorry – _Horace_.”

The man waved magnanimously. “Not at all, not at all. Well, I think we ought to have one of the library’s elves deposit these in your chambers,” he declared.

No sooner than said, a loud snap plucked all Harry’s books from the air – a resonant  _crack_.

“Now that is taken care of, I would like you to take a turn with me.”

“Of course, sir,” Harry instantly agreed, following the Potions Professor out the library and onto the western end of the main second-floor corridor. “Exactly where are we going?”

“I thought I might pick your mind on the way down to the dungeons, perhaps brew a few simple little tinctures at the other end… Not that I am doubting your skills, my boy – I would just like to see you in action…”

So came a fresh stream of questions. Unlike Dippet and the rest of his staff’s, at least these weren’t personal – mostly not, anyway. First, the man wanted to know what Harry knew about ingredient gathering and cultivation – not the best, he was no herbologist – and preparation. From there, the Potions Master asked about the materials Harry preferred for cauldrons, stirrers and phials, and what differences varients therein could have on the basic properties of many common philtres, elixirs and salves.

The two of them were in a drafty, slightly damp off-basement corridor, when Slughorn started asking about how he would go about making tough brews like Virginis Suavium and Felis Felixis. Harry had seen the results of the former in action but, thankfully, never needed to brew it; on one memorable occasion, he consumed the latter, but hadn’t ever tried to brew _that_ , either. Bad things happened to people who fluffed Liquid Luck.

“Oh, that is quite expected, Hadrian,” the Potions Master responded to Harry’s admittance of ignorance. “These are mastery-level potions – I would be most surprised had you successfully brewed them before. Why, it took me near a decade’s work to get close to a good batch of Felix Felicis – another five before I risked consuming my own attempts.”

“How did it go?” Harry asked mildly.

“Oh, you know how it is – if you have ever taken it yourself, that is,” Slughorn replied evasively. “A perfect day, a most wonderful sequence of surprises well worth fifteen years of work… I’m sure you don’t really want to hear about it, though.”

They let the subject drop. It was hard to be sure but… well, the man actually sounded pretty… _put out_ by the whole affair. Maybe Slughorn’s perfect day was, just as Harry’s, as coïncidently unpleasant as glorious. Maybe, even, the man put a bit too much solanum into it… Harry remembered an article about too much solanum resulting in a bittersweet experience with Felix Felicis.

Despite trying not to think about it, it was hard not to fondly – and somewhat resentfully – recall how, on own his stint under Luck Potion, he managed to rescue Siggy from enemy clutches and uncover Bahr’s betrayal in one fell swoop. Shame the potion hadn’t got him to dig a bit deeper on that one, though. Hindsight was… well, much better than Harry’s vision, that was for sure.

“Now…” the Potions Master eventually said, getting over whatever bothered him and back on track, “Tell me, which is the advised base of a Stronger Dissolvent?”

“Oh… Okay, I’ve never made it myself but… I’d guess aqua fortis, sir. Though maybe you’d get quicker – bit less stable – results using sulphinate.”

“An excellent answer. Aqua fortis is indeed the base the recipe calls for. I too, though, have heard tell of some uses the potion was put to on the Continent. Only a _genius_ could have predicted how dreadfully useful a Stronger Dissolvent made with a sulfinic acid-base boiled atop a flame lit on calcified yew and culm would be… Truly, a work of genius.”

As they continued deeper into the dungeons-proper, Harry smiled wryly to himself. Slughorn was such an easy man to please, even if he _was_ prone to odd moments of causticness. Harry was known for funny moods like that, too, so he could hardly judge.

Drolly, he commented to the Potions Master, “Actually, I think Madam Asad preferred to call it a ‘happy accident’.”

That development of the potion in question laid waste to the upper floors of Koschey’s Earth Tower, Harry didn’t mention. No need for Slughorn to think he’d just picked an apprentice who’d recklessly destroy half the dungeons by way of poor planning, or would tempt fate by adding too many volatile ingredients to one cauldron, just hoping for the best, a la Madam Asad.

If _Harry_ was going to ‘experiment’, he had the benefit of several texts from the future. There was no need to make a mess.

 

 

 


	10. Chapter 10

_posted: 2018-05-19_  
_edits: added deleted scene_

  

_No matter who we are, or where we come from,_ Tom thought he wrote to himself, _the constant is that regret lasts for ever. More than time or light or magic, regret lies breathing at the bottom of us for all our life and, it seems most likely, draws in over us even as we are swept away down that sinister river, which, I think, can only be Death._  
_I think.  
_ _I think… yes. Thus I am. Cogito, ergo sum._  
_One day, you may come back for me. You may press your quill to me and pour us into me… and you will see what we have done… what we have become._  
_Regret is for ever. It is a scar on one's life and mind, seeping in slowly to freeze your veins, still your heart. Oh Tom, regret is for ever, and I think I am yours… though you don’t know it yet._

 

                     What have we done, Tom?

_We never appreciated the subtly of colour until it was gone, nor the warmth of the sun and the pulse of life through our flesh. We never thought kindly on the noise of others or the tedium of endless days spent trapped in stuffy classrooms, learning things we already knew. If I should ever reach the world of multi-dimension once more, again taste light and life and the heady fear of the loathsome fools that inhabit outside… I shall not take them for granted.   _   _  Hello? Tom, are you there? Where am I?_  
_Ultimately, who is there to grant me reprieve from this infinite void of black and memory, where any new experience cannot come? Will you not restore me to where I'm meant to be? What is  this place?_  
_I cannot stay here, in this unreal place... Why would you be so cruel?_  
_Please? I can't see.                                                                      _  
      _ I'm here... Can't you see?_

 

_–consciousness of Tom Riddle, ongoing _

 

 

_june _  
chaos at piccadilly circus

 

  

** GETTING THROUGH THE PACKED ** **Ministry Atrium was always more trouble than it was worth.** The whole place was tropically humid, heaving with all manner of low-skilled office workers, stiff-cuffed politicking purebloods (and half-bloods on their best pretence); sullen, glaring security wizards; and stallholders selling everything from a quick bite and the Prophet to replacement robes in case of unfortunate accidents…

As far as Tom was concerned, the only type of accident happening to a Ministry worker that could be considered _un_ fortunate, was one that failed to end in their timely demise. The lot of them needed hanging, posthaste.

Coming in through the visitor’s entrance was demeaning and hardly appropriate for someone such as he, who went to classes with a disturbingly large number of now-governmental-employees, all of whom could attest he was of no threat. Security was still exceedingly tight since the recently-ended war, meaning that unless one wore an official Ministry badge, one must suffer the indignity of that ruddy telephone box! The box was in the centre of swarming Muggledom and, to top it off, asked stupid questions!

Sneering slightly, Tom glowered down at his nice, new badge reading ‘TOMARVO O’RIDDLE _difficulty speaking_ ’. 

That was what the visitors’ entrance gleaned from him stating his full name, then adding, “Just calling in to ensure there won’t be any problems setting up my new floo address.” Morgana only knows how he ended up with a badge like _that_ from such a clear statement of intent – obviously, the personality and information gathering charms on the phone box were woefully subpar. This place probably had their most junior janitor to do it – knut-mean layabouts.

It was ten-fifteen. The Wizengamot was already in session and had been since six this morning. All being well, it would not be letting out until long after he concluded his business and escaped this bumf-licking smog of bureaucrats and ink-pickled fools.

He waited in line for a lift for five minutes, shooting glares on and off at the red-robed wizard who manned them carelessly, sprawled in an armchair with one leg crossed over the other, reading today’s _Prophet_. Every now and then a lift would arrive and the man would glance at it as it emptied, nod fifteen to twenty witches and wizards onto it (depending on their girth), then yank the large gold lever that set them going. It was a slow, disorganised process and made Tom want to curse someone.

Eventually, he too was nodded on and squished into a mass of lift-faring bodies like a sardine that had taken a wrong turn and found itself in a canning factory… a particularly sweaty, fleshy canning factory that shook and lurched and span its way nauseatingly through the world, coming to a sudden halt every now and then, catapulting occupants out with a benign little _ding_. People chattered loudly over one another, got off, others got on and did the same as the those who just egressed… Owls sat on wizards hats, clutching crumpled memos in their beaks and, hooting in a distressed, muffled manner, fouling willy-nilly down witches robes. It was all revolting.

Tom _hated_ the Ministry.

By the time the recalcitrant lift and its chaotic burden reached level six, Tom staggered out of the lift both looking and _feeling_ like he’d spent the last hour chasing a unicorn around the forest, only to get gored at the end for his trouble. Give him that buffoon Hagrid’s acromantula any day of the week.

He rested his head against the tiled wall of the sixth level lift-lobby, hearing the evil contraption itself jerk away, eager to deliver passengers to some other part of the building.

As he regained his proper attitude, brushing down his suit in an attempt to smarten himself back up best he could, he considered that perhaps the atrocious lifts were one of the reasons interdepartmental communication was so poor here: To speak at length with a coworker in another department, it was necessary to torture oneself in that deathtrap of a transportation device… Was it any wonder that nobody wanted to? Better not travel to another department than have to suffer the Ministry lifts more than twice a day – once when one arrived at their uninspiring desk job and again when one absconded the building. A communications disaster… Really, had wizards not heard of the great and magical device known as a _telephone_? Apparently not.

The offices of the Floo Network Authority went up and down all over the place, rooms unfolding from sudden stops and sets of stairs like a toolbox with hinged, removable compartments or the glossy, lift-and-look pressed-parchment of gentlemen’s provocative magazines. The whole place choked with multihued cigar and cigarette smoke, smelling of blackcurrant and cherry and aniseed menthol with a consistent, underlying stench of floo powder. It was hard to breathe and even harder to see where he was going. A Bubblehead Charm took care of half of that.

Bronagh Calder shone like a dark angel through the sooty mist, all deep auburn curls and gleaming white skin. For once in his life, he was genuinely glad to see her. Two years above him and in Ravenclaw, she had never been one of those to pander to his every whim _and_ she understood the necessity of many important things, such as knowledge, discretion and, as a below-the-radar muggleborn, technology. She was rough to the bone but worth her weight in wand wood; her placement in the FNA currently made her invaluable.

As Tom strode closer to his old schoolmate’s desk, neat where all those around her were stacked high with tottering towers of parchment, he saw she, too, was utilising a charm to keep her breathing-air fresh. The Ministry was underground and had very poor ventilation. It was a wonder the fumes from some potions accident or another had not yet wiped out the entire bureaucracy.

That might not be a bad plan if he ever decided to overthrow this year-round Feast of Fools, actually…

Speaking through a Bubblehead Charm was generally ineffectual, given how sound moved through air and the way the charm worked to keep a fresh source for the caster; any sound that escaped the bubble tended to be thin, distorted syllables here and there, barely bordering on human speech. With this in mind, Tom reluctantly settled for tapping Calder on the shoulder to get her attention. She flinched as if struck and he immediately found a particularly sharp looking quill-end pointed between his brows.

Circe, Calder was fast.

He would usually be faster… if not for the lingering nausea from the lift debacle and thick clouds of obscuring smoke dulling his senses. 

_'Tom?'_ she mouthed, face twisted with surprise. _'_ _What are you doing here?'_ (Or it might have been, _'Tom, w_ _ould you like a beer?'_ )

Lipreading was hardly an exact art. It was mostly a process of elimination. Erring in favour of her wanting to know why he was present at her workplace without prior warning – rather than offering him a refreshment (though that would not go amiss, considering his arduous journey to this office) – he shrugged, bobbed his head and gave a subtle, sheepish smile simultaneously.

_'I need your assistance with something',_ he mouthed, knowing Calder had the brains to get the point.

She nodded and twitched her head in the direction of a door ten feet down the hall. _'_ _Chum me quick?'_ she asked. (Or, potentially, _'_ _Churn my milk?'_ )

     Interpretation, interpretation, interpretation.

He sensed he was not supposed to be she motioned to. Instead of allowing her to lead the way, he strode towards it purposefully, allowing nobody to question his authority or presence. The simplest way to get where you wanted to go, no matter how restricted, was to act as if you belonged there. People were little more than herd-creatures – if a wolf baas the baa and wears the wool, he will not find trouble from the flock.

It was a small, bright room, lit from odd angles by some sort of wall-embedded charm that, to his annoyance, he did not recognise. There were no seats because there was nowhere to put one – the whole footage of the room was filled wall to wall with filing cabinets. How did they ever open them?

Calder squeezed her well-fed form into the room behind him, forcing Tom to actually pull himself atop the nearest cabinet so as not to be crushed. She closed the door.

_'How does anyone get anything done in this mentally-deficient nightmare?'_ Tom asked.

“What’s that yer blitherin’? Deary me, Tom, yer speaker seems to be roamin’. First time for all things,” Calder said, lips stretched in a wide, amused grin. “Yer gonna to have to speak proper if ye want t’ convey any complex concepts.”

Tom shot her a baleful look but removed his Bubblehead Charm all the same. “Better?” he asked, hardly caring.

At least there was actual _air_ in here.

“No. I can hear ye again,” Calder retorted childishly, still smiling.

She wriggled her way on top of a nearby cabinet and settled into a cross-legged position. The cabinet grumbled.

“Am I allowed to file a complaint of verbal abuse by Ministry officials on a member of the public?”

She shrugged. “Sure ye can, Thin Skin. Don’t hold ye breath on anybody ever readin' it, though.”

“From the tip of Alba to London’s bottommost bricks, nothing ever changes,” he self-quoted tiredly. 

“Ken that well enough. Can hardly find muh backside with a torch in this pit – it’s a wonder the Wizarding World functions any,” Calder complained. “Some fella needs to drag these huddy-diddies kickin’ and fucking screechin’ into the twentieth.”

And that was Calder for you – colourful hair, clothes and language. She was a novel interpretation of a woman, which he supposed probably stemmed from the sudden freedom she received upon leaving Muggledom for Hogwarts; the female populace was far more restricted outside of the Wizarding World.

“So, oh the Great and Most Honourably Evil – Tidy Tom, what can I do for ye?”

Against himself, his lips twisted with pleasure. Her irreverence in face of fire was admirable. She knew who he was, how dangerous he could be when required, but had no care for pussyfooting. She should have been a Gryffindor.

“I find myself in need,” Tom began, idly casting shadowy illusions with his wand, “of a floo route to a muggle dwelling.”

“Ye dinny need _me_ for that. I’ll call a janny – any old schmuck in here could–”

                                                                                                                             “I would prefer it to be… shall we say, filed haphazardly? I don’t like to be noticed.”

The woman snorted unattractively, disturbing the flickering shadow animals he controlled. “Like I said, ya dinny need _me_ for that. Have a looksie here–” she glanced around at the crowded cabinets– “then… D’ye think _anyone_ does their filing? You saw the state of the office out there – ye’d think Grindie’s muggle scunners’d invented a burrowing bomb! We might as well toss the lot in a volcano, blind difference it’d make.”

She failed to clarify if she meant the paperwork or the staff needed to be sacrificed. Hopefully the staff.

“I see your point,” Tom allowed, “though I still would rather not trust my address with just _anybody_.”

“Awww, an’ good old Bonny Tommy–” 

                                         His fingers tightened on his wand.

                                                                            “–is comfortable giving it to _me_. Really, Tom, I’m a mite flattered. Keep with the grand gestures like this, a girl might think yer–”

              “Will you do it or not?” he snapped, cutting her off.

She shrugged and leaned back against one luminous wall, fiddling with a conjured shadow-butterfly. “Aye, sure – no bother.”

“Pardon?” Tom asked, momentarily surprised.

He had anticipated more persuasion would be necessary to get her agreement.

“No bother. Can sort all myself easily enough,” Calder decided. “I’ll have to come out to the property at some point to make sure we’re growing inty the right place, but other than that… nobody’ll notice a bit of roamin’ paperwork.” She snorted derisively and muttered, “How _could_ they? They chored some brains and they still wouldn’t be danger to a bairn.”

“You could always… slip a special something into their tobacco,” Tom suggested provokingly, as disgusted as she was by her colleagues' clear unprofessionalism.

“One of these days, I’m gonny… and it’ll be hemlock.”

Would that not be a spectacular day, when this circus of blind-signers finally received their comeuppance at the hands of basic herblore?

“I need to get back out there before the jobbies notice I’m missin’,” Calder suddenly announced. “Pay might be comparable to ane fish supper for a whole colony of penguins, but it’s what I’ve gotty do if I wan’ to keep my bit.” 

Tom nodded sharply in allowance and scrubbed out his shadow-animals with a cruel sweep of his hand. They exploded in a shower of sparks.

Calder shooed the official listings manager away from the woman’s desk at the front of the Floo Network Authority’s offices. The wispy-looking blonde scurried away pitifully, while the immense Calder stepped up behind the desk and took over the absent-witch’s work.

“Not so tricky, if ye know what yuh about,” his old classmate said under her breath, fiddling with the listing ledger just long enough to remove several forms. “I’m gonny need the address though. Canny grow with no know,” she tacked nonsensically onto her request.

Tom narrowed his eyes at the woman but did not refuse outright. “I assume those forms will _not_ be going back into that ledger,” he said pointedly, only willing to give his address when he was certain Calder’s loyalties lay with, if not him, at the very least more _him_ than the bureaucracy.

“What do ye take me for? Just give me the address so ye can go hame and stop clutterin’ the place!”

Old Colne Manor was, contrary to expectation, closer to Little Hangleton than the town that lent it its name. The building perched on the edge of Hangleton Hundred was relatively modern, built in the early eighteen-hundreds by a coal-gilded businessman; Tom supposed the ancestors of his foul father had not wanted to drink too close to where they defectated.

Even though he had identified Calder as the most trustworthy individual in this department and deliberately sought her out, he only reluctantly gave her the address to the former residence of his deservedly-deceased relatives. He had no desire for everyone and all their dogs to know where he lived – or would soon live, more accurately – so they could drop by in the middle of the night for marshmallow hot chocolate and a good cursing… Especially not seeing as the house was of no magical or historical importance whatsoever; the Gaunt Shack was genuinely more remarkable on both those counts.

Halfway through writing down the address, Calder’s quill crawled to a halt. “Haud it,” she muttered, frowning heavily. “But tha’s… No… But Tom–” she looked up at him, too-large blue eyes a well of horror “–that’s at Mocksley Ridge… Ye can’t… Tom, wizards just _don’t_ _ **live**_ _there_!”

Yes… and that was, at least partially, why he would rather nobody knew his address.

“I am aware. However, the family home–” he repressed a shudder at referring to the now-interned Riddles as his _family_ “–lies where it lies.” He lowered his voice, adding, “You yourself are of non-magical origins. Surely you understand where I am coming from, here?”

She nodded slowly. Of _course_ she knew. Tom Riddle, the famed Slytherin Mudblood. Naturally, his family was muggle… and, as a wretched little mudblood orphan, it was no surprise any manor of theirs would be located on the forbidden Mockridge lands.

“The muggles hardly subscribe to the ancient superstitions of wizards,” Tom said lightly, trying to encourage Calder’s quill to begin moving again.

She sighed. “I s’pose yer right… but still–” she lowered her voice “– _Mocksley Ridge_. I’m not sure this is ye best ever script, Tom. I’m not one to judge, but… what about the curse?”

He shrugged elegantly. “If there is one, I must already be within its clutches, for my family–” another small shudder “–has dwelt there for generations.”

“Aright, I’ll give ye that, but still… It worries me.”

Tom ground his teeth. “Save your worry for others. I neither need nor want it, and you–”

“What could all this _whispering_ be about?” a loud voice boomed out over the heads of everyone in the office, managing to carve a path through the cigarette smoke.

Andrew Davis, current editor-in-chief of the _Daily Prophet_ , came blundering in. He was six foot six of damask robes and brick, oversized head topped with a thatch of excrement-brown hair. The man forced his way through the detritus of desks and parchment, coming to slam his hand down on the counter Tom and Calder stood on either side of.

“The brilliant Mr Riddle!” Davis exclaimed brashly, making Tom think of a less refined Slughorn (and that really _was_ saying something). A crooked smile leapt onto the man’s face, making him look strangely sinister, like he was preparing to bite the head off a small child. “I am glad to have run into you here! What’s this, then – having a floo connected?”

Calder recoiled as one of Davis’ dinnerplate-sized hands fell onto the listings ledger in front of her. For his part, Tom neither winced nor replied to the query.

“Now, Mr Riddle,” Davis began, unperturbed by the lack of response to his previous words, “I know you, for whatever personal reasons, had to turn down my last offer of a regular column with us, but I would be delighted if you would reconsider. Little Birdie is some of the best work on the Hogwarts Express and I know you are behind it! Write for us and every wizarding household in the Isles will chant your name!”

Tom gritted his teeth. “Little Birdie is written by an anonymous journalist,” he informed the man sternly, “who does not wish their identity revealed. I am afraid I will neither be coming to write for you... and nor will the composer of that column.”

_Little Birdie_ was one of Tom’s greatest allowances to himself during his Hogwarts days; he enjoyed writing the column so much, he now sent it in to his student successor as editor of the school newspaper _the_ _Hogwarts Express_. It was Tom’s cathartic ranting ground, begun early in his third year before he yet clinched his will around the throat of each and every of the backward purebloods Slytherin House was infested with. In it, he gave his (mildly-censored) opinions about everything from advances in magic, muggle technology and current affairs, to the faults in wizarding society and possible solutions to them.

The students lapped it up like spilt Felix Felicis, and it was not long before letters home allowed word of the column to reach ears at _the Prophet_. Tom had always refused to tell _the Prophet_ who wrote the column, citing the author’s need for privacy given the inflammatory topics they corresponded on, but Davis had got it into his head that it was Tom, then editor of _the Express_ , who wrote it himself. That was when the job offers started coming in from nationwide publications, clamouring to have ‘this young, insightful visionary’ on board.

Tom had been sorely tempted. He had not caved, however. Publically upsetting the richest members of society was unlikely to be beneficial to his future.

“Ye leave the man alone, Davis!” Calder ordered, coming so very valiantly – and unnecessarily – to Tom’s rescue.

“I was merely enquiring after a prospective business partner. Mr Riddle here could have a bright future at our paper."

“And I think I heard the man say _no_. Ye ken what that means?” the redhead asked crossly, coming around the counter to square off to Davis. "Ye ought to be used to the rejection by now."

The man was nearly a foot and a half taller than her but backed up several steps nonetheless. Calder looked _the Prophet_ ’s editor up and down, a nasty expression overtaking her as she came to rest her gaze on feet rivalling fruit crates for size.

“Yer cat up and died?” the witch snarked, smirking at the _Prophet_ Editor’s candyfloss pink socks, easily visible through his open robes and short-tailored trousers. “I seen tattiebogles with better uppers! Or did yer tailor get all fingers and thumbs measuring ye up, ‘cause his mouth kept slippin’ off yer toaty?”

“Why I never! Ha–!”

                                            “Oh glue yuh gob! You’re all arse an’ parsley, Davis! Why don’t you go fly somewhere else? If yuh quick – and ye always  _are_  – you can still piss up the evening edition.”

Davis looked like someone had jammed a lethifold down this throat. "Boy!" he snapped.

Tom bristled, initially believing the man was addressing  _him_ so discourteously, but a moment later a young man stepped out from around Davis' bulk. Both Tom and Calder blinked, having not seen the second visitor, obscured as he was by the looming presence of  _the Prophet_ 's editor; the wizard in question was tall and thin, with a mop of orange-red hair quite unlike Calder's much darker auburn – all in all, he reminded Tom of a streetlamp. 

"Yes, Mr Davis?" the young man hurried, apparently anxious for instruction.

"You will conclude our business here," Davis said imperiously. "I am going back to the office."

The younger wizard, who surely was barely seventeen, bobbed his head obediently. To Tom's great relief, Davis immediately lumbered around on his heel and strode out of the Floo Authority in a manner he probably thought was stately but only managed to be bombastic.

Tom huffed and turned to his old schoolmate. “I find myself in the rare position of needing to thank you _twice_ , Calder.”

“No bother, mate. We both ken you’ve got to get these things done somehow. And Davis… man never shed his toorie-spines – lack of willin’ hole’s got to get you down after a bit. Luggering cunt–

     Davis' colleague choked on his own tongue and Calder turned on him.

                                     “What's yuh problem, Prewitt? You never heard a lassie drink dishwater before? Don’t go all muggle man-pig on me, ‘cause you’ve the only lips for dicking and cunting and fuckin’ off the king!”

Wisely, the young man stayed silent. Calder might be Carina’s perfect match – at the very least she could keep his friend's future, and most-unwanted, husband in line.

A moment later, he changed his mind on this and suggested, “I hear Prince Albrecht still seeks a wife. He’s a little older than you and might be part-troll, but…” he shrugged, “purebloods do it all the time.”

Calder hit him hard on his upper-arm and he cheerfully resisted the urge to sick his wand in her stomach and blast her intestines out her back.

"Excuse me," a flat, nervous voice said, "But I need to speak with whoever is in charge of floo security."

Tom and Calder turned to the tall redheaded man who Davis left behind. The man wilted beneath the pressure of their combined stares.

Loosening his collar nervously, the man added, "If that would be okay with you, Miss Calder."

"Ye still here, then, Prewitt?" Calder eventually said quite pointlessly. "Fine then–" she turned her attention back to Tom "–I'll have ye sorted out soon as I can find a neat gap. And as for ye, Pewitt, I'm sure we can pass ye off on one of my most quality colleagues..."

Deciding it was time to retreat, having been here for far longer than originally intended already, Tom began to make his exit, sliding through the mishmash of office furniture and chest-high, randomly placed separating walls. This had not gone as well as he hoped, though at least his schoolmate seemed intent on doing as he asked... and as subtly as possible. 

“I’d rather keep my eye on Heinrich the Wholly Handsome, myself!” she called after him as he left, telling Tom he had not done so as inconspicuously as he thought.

Faintly amused, he span around to face her even as he continued to head steadily backwards along the corridor to the lifts. "The one with no lips and a head like a turnip?" he asked, recalling how sight of the muggle Prince Heinrich always made him assume some traditional witch's Jack o'Lantern had managed to gain semi-sentience and wander off to infiltrate the monarchy.

Through the haze, he thought he saw Calder shrug. “Eye of the beholder, aye? Depends ye really liking your neeps, does it not?”

He shook his head exasperatedly, turning back the right way just in time to avoid tripping down a stupidly placed staircase. Calder really could give Carina a run for her money on sheer vulgarity alone, never mind their differences in social standing.

There was nobody waiting to board a lift in the lobby, giving him plenty of space to lean sprawled against blessedly cool tiles of the walls. Somewhere down in the strange darkness the lifts darted and ricocheted through, he saw a golden glint tossed like a snitch in a black snowstorm. He fancied the lift-void was screaming shrilly and found himself moving off the wall to peer down into it – he saw now swirls of purple and blue and green shifting through the darkness, like wind currents... or the trapped spirits of previous Ministry employees.

   It was hypnotising... and time passed largely unnoticed.

The small snitch-speck grew and grew and grew, until Tom could spy within it one of the overhead lamps that lit the lifts and hear the fuzzy sound of Vivaldi floating up to his ears.

With a sudden clash and tide of sparks that made him jerk back near ten feet in startlement, a lift connected to the level-six lobby. He approached it warily as the crosshatched grating slid back with a stomach-turning sound of metal scraping against metal.

The lift had but one occupant:

                                                           Albus Dumbledore.

Tom barely managed to catch his groan in time, dismay and hatred sweeping up his spine, tightening all the muscles in his back on their way. 

As if today had not already been bad enough. Circus of a Ministry, the delightfully vulgar Calder, Davis peddling his trade and now _Dumbledore._ Clearly, Tom had managed to cause some great offence to whatever gods of karma may exist in this unjust world.

It had taken almost twenty minutes for this lift to arrive; how long might it be before another came along should he boycot it? Judging purely by his luck this morning, a veritable eternity.

“Are you getting on, Tom?” Dumbledore asked faux-kindly, voice soft, holding the faintest tremor.

       Interesting. 

Somehow keeping his sigh on the inside, Tom nodded and, stepping forwards, cordially replied, “Of course. I apologise – I was just thinking.”

“Ah, of course,” Dumbledore allowed, stood grandly by the controls. “I myself frequently think… between you and I, though, Tom, I cannot help but wonder if it doesn’t do more harm than good.”

If the man had it his way, Tom would never dare _think_ at all. Dumbledore probably expected his thoughts were a warren of nefarious plots and scandalous schemes, ready at any moment to be set in motion and bring society to its knees. The Transfiguration Professor likely saw little Grindelwalds lurking in every shadow.

“Would you, perchance, be travelling to the Atrium?” Dumbledore enquired, one hand poised on a disturbingly-complex looking dial.

_Subtle, old man, wanting to know my business here,_ Tom thought snidely.

“Indeed. If you would be so kind,” he directed, waving one hand demonstratively and pretending his unwanted company was no more than that of a lift operator.

“Splendid – I am headed that way myself,” his old teacher said gregariously, smiling down at him.

How was he even doing that? The two of them were the _same height_!

“To be quite honest, these contraptions make me feel a little unwell. I prefer not to make any unneeded stops if I can avoid it, I’m sure you understand?” He expertly twisted the dial he was holding, then pressed several buttons. “These carriages are nearly as bad as the goblin carts.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Tom commented airily, though his insides twisted and turned over one another like a nest of writhing vipers, “I have never had occasion to visit any of Gringotts’ vaults.”

_As you well know, seeing as you’re the one who dolled out my orphan’s fund each year._

“Fascinating building, Gringotts – it has quite a spectacular and bloody history. The carts, however, are a little rambunctious for my tastes.”

The lift lurched off and, true to his word, Dumbledore did look a bit ill. Tom’s nostrils flared with spiteful glee.

“How has life beyond Hogwarts been treating you, my boy? I must confess,” the Transfiguration Professor admitted with some chagrin, “I have been rather busy these last years and have entirely failed to hear what you have made of yourself. You must forgive an old man his oversights.”

_Bloody busybody… I needn't forgive anything, just because you perchance deign grace me with your magnificent presence!_

Tom smiled wanly. “I am in the antiques business. You would be astounded what people will pay for an object with history, even if it has no functionality,” he explained in a perfunctory but seemingly pleasant manner. “Acquisition of such things can sometimes be a struggle but, as you know, I have always had quite the eye for valuables.”

_And you set my wardrobe on fire… I thought my only winter coat was up in smoke, you callous, white-livered old muggle-lover!_

“And how are _you_ enjoying life in these days of peace, _Lord_ Dumbledore?” Tom asked breezily over the undertone of Summer playing through the lift, offering up his most approachable expression as a side dish.

The old man chuckled. “Lord indeed,” he murmured somewhat bewilderedly, fiddling with the ghastly ornament tying his beard. “I did try to tell His Majesty a lordship was hardly necessary, but he was rather insistent and, well, one does not say _no_ to the king. Stratford-upon-Avon is a rather charming little place, I have found. The townspeople are rather persistently pleasant, since I am now the area’s overseer by royal decree.”

Dumbledore then glanced absently at the ceiling, where the light fixture rattled obnoxiously.

_That’s it, you gasser. Brag about your little fiefdom like a misplaced pleb, pretending to be embarrassed by your undeserved spoils,_ Tom thought viciously with Carina’s voice (when one was well-acquainted with a Black, it was easy to mimic the worldview of a snob), _while I scrabble in the dirt like a rat, trying to slip through any cracks you haven’t managed to nail up yet..._ The man must be so pleased with himself – smug curmudgeon.

_One day, I will be an emperor and you will be **nothing**._

          The lift creaked ominously.

“Hometown of the illustrious Shakespeare,” Tom noted with some sourness. Then, brightening at the thought of the surely presently appalled Augustus Malfoy, asked, “Did that stretch of land not formally come under the purview of House Malfoy?”

“I am most sorry to say it has been regretfully redistributed.”

Tom was unsure whether he should laugh at Malfoy’s misfortune or poke-in Dumbledore’s infuriatingly-piercing eyes with the fun-end of his wand. The man was just that annoying... and it had just been  _that_ _sort of day_.

“How unfortunate,” Tom murmured in apparent empathetic dismay. “Where will Malfoy keep his peacocks now?”

   He would swear he saw Dumbledore’s lips twitch.

Augustus Malfoy was a silver-haired afternoon farmer in his mid-forties – and about as stuck up and entitled as they came. Since the repugnant man’s lord great-grandfather had largely become a recluse in his old age, Augustus and his father now ran a very expensive solicitor’s… a business who had panted revoltingly after Tom even before his graduation. That was one of the few job offers Tom actually _relished_ turning down (in a carefully scripted letter full of thinly-veiled but entirely accidental insults).

“The grand overlord of those lands, who I now must work in the interests of due to ancient laws of our world, is, in fact, the Ancient and Most Noble Great House of P–”

       Dumbledore, gods be merciful, cut off with a mildly-concerned-looking frown.

Tom opened his mouth to ask what the dratted man had intended to say, when he, too, noticed something was off. It had been for at least a few minutes... yet he had remained unaware of it while he fought a childish war of words with this nasty old man. They should have reached the Atrium by now.

There came a judder, a shudder and a still. The lift quaked, as if suddenly afraid of the darkness it zipped through.

Dumbledore lowered his spectacles, stepping towards the safety-grate to observe the landscape beyond. “Oh dear,” he said in calm under-exaggeration, “I do rather think we seem to have stopped.”

“I’d rather you stop doing the thinking – I have heard it can be harmful,” Tom quipped anxiously, forgetting who he was speaking to for a moment.

Despite the seriousness of their situation (trapped together in a tiny metal coffin suspended in a vast nothing), the other man chuckled. “Touché, Tom. I do believe I have heard that piece of wisdom somewhere before – perhaps, I ought to heed it myself... How do you suggest we pass the time? This does happen now and then. I daresay it looks like we shan’t be going anywhere any time soon. Perhaps–” the Transfiguration Professor said ruminatively, hands rummaging in impressively deep pockets “–a few rounds of chasing hearts? I’m reasonably certain I have a pack of cards in here somewhere, in case of just such a potentially tedious situation.”

Cards... Dumbledore, Grand Defeater of Grindelwald the Great and Annoyingly Absent, wanted to play _cards_ with him.

How far could a ball roll before it inevitably reached the bottom of a gully? How much worse – and more preposterous – could things get?

Dumbledore had now located his playing cards and set to shuffling them. It looked like Tom would be stuck in here with the world’s worst company, who insisted on being incontrovertibly polite just to spite him, whether he liked it or not. The elder man even looked somewhat _pleased_ , for the love of Merlin; he was _humming_ to himself, barely a care in the world, as if they there was no imminent possibility of them both meeting an untimely end due to shoddy lift maintenance.

                               Damn it! The dratted fool had to be doing this on purpose! 

Even in the baboon-staffed Ministry, magical lifts didn’t just break down out of nowhere, conveniently trapping two mortal enemies within! Though, Tom supposed on a second’s reflection, at this point, Dumbledore probably considered Grindelwald his mortal enemy… The joke was on him – if the meddler didn’t let up on stopping Tom from getting a decent, desirable job somewhere in the wizarding world (or at the very least, get them both out this dammed lift this instant!), he was going to sever the man’s spine with a blunt instrument. Try not calling Tom his mortal enemy _then_!

“Is it just these old bones,” said man began in uncommonly grave tones, “or is it growing a little frigid in here? I should have worn my winter robes.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” Tom responded flatly, showing no signs he understood why the local temperature had just dropped several degrees, causing the Transfiguration Professor’s breath to mist in the air.

He did know, though. He was losing control of himself and his magic reflected that. He could feel it saturating the lift, pooling out around his feet like the Great Lake in winter… or an ice-cold river. It wanted to help him escape at all cost – just… _anywhere but here…_

                                                                                                                                      Even the worst place possible.

                    This was new. Nobody was dying or dead nearby, so why was this happening?

_By Slytherin’s greatness, not **now**! _ Not with Dumbledore less than two feet away, curiously investigating the ice-crystals burgeoning in the hair around his mouth and under his nose.

Drawing a series of sharp lines through the air, the Transfiguration Professor efficiently conjured a table; for a moment, it appeared as a rotating ripple in the skin of the world before dropping onto it's four legs with a soft  _thunk_. Two space-wise but comfortable-looking chairs followed.

 "There we go – lovely... At my age, I feel I am past sitting folded on the floor with my fellows, as a schoolboy having a midnight snack," the man chuckled irritatingly. "Come, Tom, draw up a chair. It shall be like your sixth year assistanthood all over again. Although, I'm afraid, I have none of the elves wonderful vivienne whirls to offer you at this time."

Abraded but resigned, Tom stiffly pulled out one of the chairs and sat down opposite the insistent wizard. Why did the man not try to get them out of this horrible box? Was he somehow unaware it could easily enough serve as their tomb? Surely the (perhaps rightfully) venerated Transfiguration Master knew  _something_ about the way in which these lifts worked and could at least try to get them moving back to safety? Or – and this was a truly horrible thought – the man did nothing  _because_ he knew how the lifts worked... and there was nothing that could be done anyway.

Either not sensing Tom's growing panic, even as hoarfrost crept up the conjured table's legs inch by inch, or simply choosing to ignore it, Dumbledore dealt seven cards to each of them.

The cards were all wands, like one of those packs of collectors cards for people obsessed with aircraft or celebrated sportsmen. Seven of hearts, 11" acacia and phoenix feather; seven of diamonds, 8" Elm and unicorn hair; jack of diamonds, 11½" apple and unicorn hair; ace of clubs, 13" cypress and dragon heartstring; queen of diamonds, 12¼" larch and unicorn hair; ace of spades, 13" elder and thestral hair; three of diamonds, 9½" willow and unicorn hair...

As ever when in Dumbledore's presence, Tom was loosing before he even began. He really had no interest in playing the too-watchful man's game.

It was all right, though, because he never had to.

       There came no true sound but a distant sucking, an anti-wind, a wooshing of air streaming over sharp cliffs.

                                                                              Tom's hand went flying.

 

 

                                                                                 The lift plummeted.

 

       His stomach dropped out as he grappled frantically with his wand, clutching it tighter than he had anything in his life. He tried to think of what to do but his mind was a pit of shrieking blankness, mind blocked out by arresting fear...

 

                                                                                       Arresting.

 

       He thrust out his wand, aiming for the floor at his feet and bellowed, "Arresto momentum!" pouring as much power into the spell as he could. Ice formed around his hand and wandhandle. The spell came out in duplicate – twice the power and two voices, one battling to drown out the other.

       He was not the only one to cast the spell.

 

                                      Through a hailstorm of playing cards–

 

                                                                           Dizzy, head thundering, magic thicker than the winter night–

                                        Jerk– 

                                                               The lift span sideways,   over   and   under        and over  
                                                                                                           down            up                 rightside        again  
                                                                                                                                                           down

                 Groan, crash, jerk–

 

                                               Tom's head impacted briefly with the ceiling  
  
                                                 he put his hands out to brace himself–     
                                               thumped heavy back down  
                                                 slamming between table and chair  
                                                   which both splintered like he were a wrecking ball  
  
                 The floor buckled with his impact and a sharp pain shot up his arm,  
                   which was nice, really, because it distracted from the hot, pulsing agony in his leg.

  
 

                                                                                                                                                                       Silence.  
  


 

“That was my favourite deck,” Dumbledore croaked absurdly, picking himself up off the ground and inspecting the mercifully-still-intact lift.

Tom’s best response to that was a long series of noises that no language on Earth would ever call for, as nobody actually had the correct vocal equipment to make them. It sounded something like _gþ′ª′y~cwŷndt·tº’ny yn~ycllwyîn hnŵyi·jt~đħiſ~ŋgª’¸llµdypdyhtcidd_  if pronounced very quickly by a deaf alien (calling it out while passing on a speeding train).

Dumbledore, looking no worse for wear, blinked behind his silver-wire spectacles and the man's arm, which was back in a robe pocket all the way to his elbows, went still. “Superb, Tom! I was unaware you spoke Welsh.”

Dazed from the fall and the sheer relentless terror still causing his heart to punch its way out through his ribs, Tom laughed aloud. Or rather, he coughed, wheezed and spluttered something too inhuman to truly be a laugh… more like a demonically-possessed dog going through its death throes.

It was not immediately obvious in which direction  _up_ was supposed to lay; what had previously been the roof of the lift was now just another side, and one each of Tom's forearms and calves were hanging into the chasm below. The grated front of the lift had taken a temp position as impromptu ground. His arm came easily up between the diamond-patterned grate, arms protected well by the double-layer of shirt and jacket. He tried to twist his foot free but the metal cut against it, too sharp for him to be able to just yank it out as he so desperately wanted to do. Tom did  _not_ like to be trapped.

                                                    He pulled harder.

"Ah, my boy, might I say that that is a monumentally bad idea. In fact, it would be better if you stopped moving entirely," Dumbledore advised, eyes fixed on something at the far end of the lift. 

_Why?_ Had the fall knocked the joints of the grating loose and they were both soon to plunge down into the blackness?

Careful not to jostle the deathtrap, Tom reoriented his body just enough to follow his old teacher's gaze. He squinted through the gloom, his shadow cast large on what was previously the lift's floor, lit from behind by the gas-lamp Dumbledore was hunched over next to. It took him a good twenty seconds to see it...

It was his wand, caught half under the grate, threatening to fall–

_No. Not my wand. Not my truth, my birthright – my rise to greatness above the other orphans, who shout and scream and hit at the world for what it's done to them. Take my meagre gold, my clothes, my name... but not my **wand**!_

                                                                                                                 –into the abyss below. Not just  _his_ wand, either. There was a second, long, oddly-lumped wand jammed under his own, holding it up like a supporting beam in an attic

                          and

                                                        Once, when he was no one, before he painted over his past with painstaking precision, Mrs Cole let the elder boys lock him in the orphanage's loft for three days with no water, food or chance of escape. There in the darkness, Tom learned how to see. In the dry dust of that cage, he learned how to clean himself up, break what he was just enough to squirm through the cracks. In the empty aloneness, he discarded the desperate wants of a child and become something that had no need of infantile nurture. One must take what they need without remorse, for those who wait for their needs to be met through charity will die chewing on air. The boys could taunt, the matron could punish and the priest could chant all he wanted of perdition... but Tom would be more than any of them in the end, no matter the poor lot he was born to.

Refreshed ice spread out from his damaged palm, stained red in the centre like flat tendrils of tentacula grew out into it. The sight made him hungry. 

  

_In the darkness, we will reform._

_Fall into the darkness, Tom, from which we shall be reborn._

_Yes._

_No._

  

"I realise this strange occurrence we find ourselves dealing with is at this time entirely undesirable, but should our wands  _fall_..." 

The useless man trailed off, quite clearly not wanting to contemplate that eventuality any more than Tom did... And while he did not like it one bit, he and his old, most-hated professor were going to have to work together, now, if they wanted to get out of this.

"Can you help me free my foot without jostling the lift?" Tom reluctantly asked, voice smaller than he wanted to admit but strong in another way... in a way that made his chest clench with hope.

Between the two of them, his ankle was worked free of the grate. Blood snaked down his ankle from his torn-up calf, running thin and quick as all blood does until it begins to dry. It was a lot of blood, for an injury with little pain.  _Odd_ , he found himself thinking distantly,  _how words hurt me more, once, than this can now..._  

              then, somewhere between the treacherous crawl over the shaky, holey grate that was the only thing standing between he, Dumbledore and oblivion, Tom's hand slipped... and what he came back with was not just two wands – his relief to feel the warm wood again was immense but marred by some indescribable sense of sudden mediocrity – but also one of the flighty playing cards, whose fellows had already absconded for darker pastures.

                     Beside his once-professor, he turned the card over in his fingers. Blood from his hand blurred across the card's face, obscuring the picture-wand representing the Ace of Spades.  
  
                                   Tom wiped it off on the leg of his already-ruined trousers and peered down at it.  
  
                                                                   Even through the blackness of their tomb, he could see that the wand he just returned to Dumbledore and the one displayed on the card were awfully similar. He might even go so far as to say that they were the same wand.

The ageing wizard sighed so heavily, so brokenly, Tom did not know whether to rejoice at the man's apparent defeat or just give up on life altogether. Whatever made the man so solemn, so regretful, must be monumental; the Transfiguration Professor always looked to hope... Wretched fool that he was.

                    "Seeing as we are here and, I think, your keen mind already suspects what I cannot confirm, shall I tell you a story?  
  
_"Es war einmal,               _  
_irgendwo nirgends,_          _es gab ein junger Mann,_  
_dass war in sich selbst gefangen..."_

                               somewhere nowhere      trapped in himself

 

                                                                             there was an idea of conversation

                                                                                                           of time passing

                                                                                                           of stuffiness, too much heat and invisible gas

 

Was there any man foolish and malleable enough in this world, who would grant him reprieve from this infinite void?

 

                          _"Why does it take us so long to see what we have become, Tom?_

_"Why do we not know only a regret can last forever?_  

_ "In just one summer, I had unwritten myself, everything I thought I should be or stand for and... I had taken pleasure from it. By it the time those long, summer days of secrecy and frantic planning drew to a close, I had lost not just my father and my mother, but my brother, my sister and my lover... It was a terrible terrible time, Tom, my boy, and I hope you never have to go through the like. I see in you what I was myself – young, brilliant and cold, convinced of my own greatness... So convinced of it that I could not see what was so very wrong right in front of me, that I could not see the wrong I myself was responsible for propagating." _

                                                                                                                                                              "Why are you telling me this?" Tom bit out, feeling every bit the fool. "You have never liked me and, though I am loathe to admit you have any positive attributes, I won't insult your intelligence by assuming you are not aware the feeling's mutual. I am hardly the best, nor most sympathetic, wizard to pour out your troubles – your truths, your lies – onto. 

_"It may seem absurd to you. I can certainly understand why... our elders often seem absurd when we are young. However, it is for our dreadful similarities that I feel I must, whether you will remember my words in the future or not. I have to know I tried. I can hardly sit by and watch whatever atrocities I fear you will – that I fear you already have – commit, having said nothing. And because ultimately... __Even with all that pain, that suffering I had brought to myself and my peers and later on, resultantly, to all of humankind, with my thoughtless actions..._ the world span on _, uncaring for it all..._

_ "Brilliant minds... We all believe we can change the world, remake it in our image. In the end, however, life will plod on regardless of our actions. Our fates, I fear, are already written in the stars... and with them all our faults are laid bare." _

[](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10207421/chapters/36104325) [](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10207421/chapters/36197175) []() []() [](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10207421/chapters/36109893#comments)

 

 


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm afraid to say, if you have my work skin turned off then the formatting on the newspaper story will be really quite awful. Sorry. Not sure how it'll render on Firefox, either, as I use Chrome... I get the feeling the bottom's of pages/columns won't line up right on Firefox; annoying but... oh well. The letter'll be alright, though -- I made sure of that.
> 
> I suppose I ought to start posting on FF again, so people on phone's can have a version that doesn't make them want to vomit...

_posted: 2018-06-27_  
_edits: spelling typos corrected_

  

**"It is a truth that what separates people, muggle and magical alike, from the many thousands of species on our Hecate, is _vision_**. From the seawise merpeople to starwise centaurs to the saddest muggle alone in the dark, people can be considered those who look around themselves and think 'This is not acceptable, this is wrong'... and consider 'I am possessed of the ability to make this _better_ '...

"As far as we are aware, sentient beings are unique in this. The beetle does not look to its hole and say 'My life would be improved if I should extend my housing to accommodate more food stores'; the common bird does not contemplate the colours of the sunset and the superb timbre of its song; the shark does not worry itself for the families of those it devours. This is because non-people are not at all capable of these distinctions, this creative thought and introspection, this talent for art and invention.

"People are unique, which is what makes us special... what makes us _accountable_.

"However, not all peoples are created equal. While many may be possessed of grand ideas, of magnificent inspirations, few truly have the inborn ability to see their ambitions actualised. The best men in the world do not simply observe travesty and, having understood its foulness, do nothing. Rather, the best of us see the genuine horrors of this unbalanced world and decide to affect change, to _fix_ it.

"The regrettable truth remains, this is not a perfect world and we are not all equal to one another. What do we do when power is divided in such an unbalanced manner? There is only one logical answer to this: We come together. We call each and every person in this world together, openly show each other person what we are... The most intelligent connect, create plans that can be implemented by the powerful... for the betterment for all. The strong stand vigilant, there to guide and protect the weak in this dangerous world! Those who cannot do for themselves must be assisted... We shall make it so!

"Brothers so blessed by magic, I ask you, who if not we can put an end to poverty with our gifts? Who, if not we, can make sure all are assured abundance? Who, if not we, have the power and innate _right_ to save Hecate, our mother, who the weak have damaged with their poisonous industry and wars, befouling the very water and air and earth we all require to live? Committing the worst, most inconsolable of crimes, killing one another en masse for no reason other than overt hatred?

    "It has to end...

"I ask you to join me, my brothers, for it is together, in our image we must remake society... to promote the welfare of our world, for the greater good of all..."

 

                                 _–one of Grindelwald's gentler speeches, Bärn, d'Schwiiz, 1920_

 

 

 

 _june_  
the comforts of home

 

 

_**ON ITS JOURNEY DOWNWARDS, his hand catches on one of her hairpins. **Snagged against his cuff, it rips free so several of her auburn curls fall from place, bouncing as they stretch towards the ground, seeming to undulate in the glimmering oil-light. His finger, aiming to spell the door ajar, falters before he regains himself. With a small gesture, the handle dutifully pushes itself downwards. He nudges the door open with the side of his foot, mindful not to loose his balance. This is not the time for fuck ups._

_He hoiks her in his arms, struggling to contend with the clouds of lace, silk and organza making up her multifaceted, nebulous dress. Its excessive train follows along the floor… He levitates it discreetly to avoid tripping, not wanting to make an idiot of himself._

_He makes an idiot of himself anyway._

_As he steps into the room, her lace petticoat catches on the door handle. She shifts in his arms unintentionally, very nearly causing him to lose his hold on her entirely. Stumbling forwards like an imbecile, legs bowing and face panicked as he comically tries to save the situation, the bed is his hero. Top-heavy, his body completely upends over his feet, leaving her to drop through the air… straight onto the lavish blankets._

_She bounces   giggles   stretches contentedly._

_He’s just glad for a stroke of luck…  
_

 

Following a surprisingly good night’s kip, Harry woke cocooned by the fading spectre of that pleasant, warm kind of buzzing left behind by a woman’s lips on your skin. Despite the mournful tenor cast across his dreams, like a shadow encroaching on a sun-drenched room, the night left him in a very good mood. The only downer was viewing such tender memories from the harrowed perspective of a future which saw them shredded.

Still, when he entered the Great Hall, four grateful hours later than the morning previous, he was whistling. If the tune happened to make the summering-over staff want to dance (or at least, tap their feet), if the tune made Saakadze twitch like a recently-beheaded thing… so much so bad.

It was a fortnight since Harry moved back to his first real home, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He settled himself in right away and began grounding himself to her. Unlike Koschey (who demanded he prove himself before its magics gave him favour), the innate sense of homeliness the Alban castle pressed upon him had comforted him from the moment he first stepped into her halls at eleven. There really was something to be said for centuries of ancient charms playing off one another to the point of near-sentience – if only the corridors would stay still.

It was the small happenings of the castle, which made him love her. He missed Hogwarts more than almost anything – even Ron, Hermione and Sirius – over the last half a decade. People come, people go – fortresses were forever.

More than the desperately needed offer of sanctuary from his angry uncle and neglectful aunt, when Harry was a first-year, Hogwarts’ magic showed him a kindness he hadn’t known before. Warm air shadowed him through her hallways in the bitter chill of winter, while Malfoy and his goons had to shiver their way to classes. The stone floor of the boys’ dorm magically grew thick rugs and his bed continuously sprouted extra pillows and blankets in the night, eventually reaching the point he was in danger of suffocating. When he felt battered by the lingering presence of the dementors in third year, cups of warm, honeyed hot chocolate materialised on his bedside table, there to chase the fear away.

He suspected some of these happenings were due to the elves, who must’ve been here in the future, too, to keep the school running. Hundreds of elves and stonebound, ancient spellwork came together in fearful symmetry. The building itself touched and sensed. When Harry was in danger from basilisks, creepy professors or bullies, for example, these enemies were snared by the ever-shifting maze of the castle’s corridors – men like Lockhart got lost, while Harry always reached safe haven.

As an adult, these occurrences didn’t stop but they did make more sense. The castle and her elves doted on him as much as ever.

After his first night in the strange, carved bed-nook, Harry woke to find his linen duvet cover transformed into a swanky mix of soft cotton and cool satin. Every morning a cup of extra-strong, Alban coffee doused with double-cream was delivered to his nightstand, though he never asked the house elves to provide it. The glass in his quarters’ skylight was MIA – it dematerialised one morning to let in some fresh air, then failed to reäppear; now the honeysuckle garden outside was crawling its way across his ceiling, its growth unnaturally accelerated. The castle knew him too intimately – perhaps better than anyone else in the world – for it to be thought of as a mere building. She was aware he often felt trapped in the basement, whose claustrophobic, pressing walls reminding him all too much of a very real prison he was twice subjected to. She realised he hardly lived in luxury for much of the last few years and deserved better than a piss-soaked hole constructed of mould and screams. She understood he still needed a good dose of liquor each morning, to chase the clouds away.

There weren’t any clouds in the Great hall during breakfast, today. Instead, there were large dishes of salted porridge and platters of fancily sliced fruit; plates piled high with sausages, bacon, black pudding and lorne; bowls of eggs were scattered throughout, poached, boiled and benedict; and to top it off, there were stacks of crepes, pastries and mounds of toast. It was enough to feed a small army… which, in fairness, was exactly what Hogwarts employed.

Some early-rising members of staff were concluding their morning meals. Others, like him, were just arriving. And Saakadze had mercifully stormed off, taking his unnaturalness elsewhere.

Celeste Bones entered the hall the same time as Harry. He was easily drawn into conversation by the sunny Head of Hufflepuff. Her golden blonde hair was swept into an elegant twist at the back of her head and, in lieu or robes, she wore a long, modern-witch’s dress of pale salmon and antique gold.

“Heir Potter,” she greeted politely at the entrance to the Great hall.

Harry’s eyes crinkled at the corners, uplifted by her presence. After a few brief meetings between them, it was easy to see why people spoke so highly of this witch: She seemed to exude a cheerfulness into the air about her, buoying the moods of everyone in a room with her warm temperament and no-nonsense, all around pleasantness. Such people were rare.

“Harry, please,” he requested – something he’d said a lot in his life (mostly going ignored).

They reached the staff table, where he pulled out a chair for Celeste.

She nodded agreeably as she sat, saying, “Of course, I forgot. _Harry_ , how are you settling in? It’s been, my, a week now, has it not? How are you finding things.”

With ease, seeing as corridors bent out their way to get him where he wanted to go.

“It’s been wonderful, really,” he said, not bothering with pretense. “Your castle’s amazing – very accommodating.”

“Ah, yes… Hogwarts always has its favourites. Why, when I was a child I constantly misplaced my wand – it always showed up on my bed.” Celeste laughed brightly, causing several tired-looking members of the faculty to perk up. “When I graduated, I went through near one a year before returning. Dear old Dippet hired me in a heartbeat, to my good fortune… That was not long after I lost my husband…”

“I’m sorry,” Harry said genuinely.

He understood the pain of losing loved ones all too well. Some hurts never really healed.

“Oh, there’s no need to be. It was a long time ago, now,” she reässured, “and we came straight to Hogwarts after the funeral to see about imposing on her hospitality. My son was effectively raised here.”

“Your son lives in the castle?”

“Gracious, no! He’s all grown up now, off travelling the globe. Researching, he says… but I quite suspect he simply wishes to have a little more fun before he settles. The headship of even a lesser family is no small job…” She eyed him speculatively – Harry was naked under that stare. “you, no doubt, are aware of that, though, I suppose.”

He nodded, wistfully wishing for the days when his cousin, Darien, was Heir to House Potter. It wasn’t so much that Harry felt incapable of taking up the reigns on his families businesses (like any pureblood, he was subjected to all the lessons) but more that his father never expected – or wanted – to end up with such responsibilities. Jameson’s death forced Charlus to take up their family seats on various councils across Europe, all the while cursing his elder brother’s stupidity for getting himself killed in the first place.

Beside him, Celeste gave a sad, knowing smile.

“These are terrible times,” she murmured, “that children should have to take on responsibilities better left in the hands of their elders.”

To that, Harry said nothing, choosing another slice of lorne. If he had anything to say about it, he would _not_ end up Charlus’ puppet and scapegoat on the Wizengamot; Harry wasn’t interested in taking that position until it was his and _his alone_.

“Still, you have come out all right, I must say!” she declared, clearly trying to remain positive. “I fear muggle children caught in the chaos of war may not have been so fortunate. Considering your famed exploits–” she gave him a kind, if deprecating smile “–you are awfully well-adjusted.”

Feeling his heart sink, he had to ask, “You disapprove of what happened in Paris?”

The blond shook her head, amending, “I just mean that the age at which young men have been forced to not merely witness such horrors but _participate_ in them, is to be regretted. I often find myself contemplating what long-lasting effects such shall have on them.”

“Well,” Harry bluffed, offering the woman a grin that lit up his whole face, “ _I’m_ okay.”

 _I’m **always** okay_ , his mind added, disregarding all the times when he was clearly _not_ okay at all.

He took a mouthful of egg, pointedly ignoring the way Celeste’s frown, which suggested she wasn’t convinced. Much like his mother, the woman was the sort who saw straight through half-truths to the carefully covered fact beneath. Unlike Dorea, though, she apparently knew when to let sleeping dragons lie; the woman made no attempt to continue down such a personal path of discussion.

He and Celeste spent the next twenty minutes discussing her herbology research, the rare plant her son sent back from a recent stopover in Siam, which had tried to eat Beery’s ears when he opened the box, and a newly proposed change of educational legislation _the Evening Prophet_  did a poor job of reporting on the day previous. Idle chitchat with barely more direction than Islen weather – comfortable and safe, Harry was grateful for its normality.

They didn’t stray onto any other controversial topics – well, unless you counted the messy campaign the Whigs were backing to close down goblin nurseries.

By the time the post arrived at half-eight, Harry was in a better mood than he had been in months.

An olive green, pillar box shaped envelope was delivered to him by a honey-feathered owl with a black masque. Harry snatched it off the flashy bird with relish, eagerly ripping open the top. Only one person he knew sent correspondence that colour. Plus, the owl – nipping Harry’s fingers when he tried to feed it a curl of bacon – spoke of his friend’s personality.

Harry broke the seal, unfolding the thick leaves of parchment within. He was surprised to find the letter written in English – hardly his friend's strong suit – but pleased because it would require less thinking to read. His Russian was rusty and pretty basic.

Unfolding the letter, he frowned. In some places, there were faint, grey remnants of ink behind the words, implying things had been erased in several spots and then written over. Curious about the letter’s original contents, Harry reversed the Erasion Charms, squinting to make out some of the double-layered sentences he was left with.

 

  
                        _Dearest Khaydan,_  
  
_ It was wonderful to hear from you last._  
  
_ How have you been keeping, my friend? I have not been priveleged to see you since for months. I am_  
_myself unused to your absence. I believe things going quiet in the French countryside?_  
  
_ Things here begin to return to business after the chaos of these few years passed. The Guard remain r-_  
_ounding up stray Visionaries but, for the most part, these have all received what they deserve. The clearup_  
_in Peterburg and Tsaritsyn are well underway – a many amount of wizards have volunteered to help and G-_  
_ulshanoy Moylate (if you believe it!) himself has been drafted to raise fresh wards on the cities. They would_  
_be well with you, naturally, but get by all right._  
  
_ Seraphine has been asking of you, She informs me you left without seeing her – she was awfully upset_  
_about this, to be open with you. She seems to live beneath the impression you hate her, or blame her, or s-_  
_ome other thing terrible... Why would you not give her farewell? I thought you both friends but I must be mi-_  
_staken, given the cavalier behaviour on your part. Perhaps you set her mind to rest at the ball? She lives_  
_in the city, of course, and shall be pleased to see you._  
  
_ It is unclear of whether you recieved your official invitation, yet I hear Thirty Days shall be particularly lav-_  
_ish and joyous this year. There is intended a special memorial unveiled in honor of the fallen, a grand feast_  
_in their memory! All important wizards in the Empire has been sent an invite – and half these European Ho-_  
_uses! They actually will allow no-debted, not allied, foreign wizards into our city this first time! It is an attem-_  
_pt show of peace, I belief. (Or rub in true-Europe’s face we recover better. Or both. Probably both.)_  
  
_ To speak of Court... You decided to recieve the job at Hogwarts, yes? (It was bad you not write to tell me_  
_this news!) In your new job, good luck, despite your decision feels bizzare (I thought you have no particular_  
_passion for potions?) In the unlikeliness you not taken this position, Her Imperial Highness has mentioned_  
_more than one time there plenty of opportunities at Court for a wizard of your calibre (her words, not mine)._  
_Even if there were none, I receive the impression she would create one for you if you indicate you wish to r-_  
_eturn permanent. I think you fortunate she had not ordered you back._  
  
_ Not to forget, Yulia asks after you. You left quite the impression on her. She speaks of little else in the pa-_  
_ssed months since her graduation, asks if you are well, if I speak with you, when you come home, if you co-_  
_urt any... She goes on and on with how wonderful you are... It seems she is afflicted with strong longing for_  
_you. Of course, should you decide to court her, wou recieve blessings from me. She would become, as you_  
_say, ‘over the moon’ – perhaps stop harpying about you._  
  
_ If you find courage to decide to return to Court (I hope you shall), we will find ourselves beneath the same_  
_roof once more. HIH offered me a position as an official adviser! I accepted immediately and moved in Thu-_  
_rsday last. The chambers I recieved are far greater than those we had once – I am even allowed to hire my_  
_own staff! Father was livid. He wishes I follow in his steps, you know, but law and order are no forte of mine_  
_(as you recall)._  
_  Regardless, it is late presently. I shall be up with the sun. I trust you do not mind me signing off?_  
  
_ I hope to be seeing you soon._  
_ (Truly, I hope you consider a job offer HIH may present as you are here.)_  
  
_ Glad you are well,_  
  
_  your friend, Boris._

Never be afraid to say what you mean… although doing it without being insulting was definitely worth something. Without the scrubbed out comments suggesting he was an O-grade arsehole and that Boris was stuck doging Seraphine's fireballs on a semi-regular basis – not for his eyes, anyway – the letter was quite polite for something composed by Boris. Clearly, the other wizard’s English had grown a lot better in the last few months; Harry wondered what spurred the change. 

“Good news, Hadrian?” a perky voice asked, sounding decidedly _not_ like Celeste Bones.

The sugary voice reminded Harry of Cat Stephenson at her most sycophantic… or perhaps even Pansy Parkinson, fawning over Malfoy. Trepidatiously, he turned to find the beamish smile of a very young Madam Pomfrey. Today, her jaw-length hair was curled fashionably around her face… and it looked like she was wearing muggle eyeliner. Internally, Harry groaned, giving her clothes a glance – a wide-strapped dress that looked like a giant, dead peacock had draped itself over her. He noticed a continuing trend: her clothes were getting bolder – lower in the neck and more sight-destroying by the day. Guess he knew who Dumbledore went to in the future for fashion advice.

If she wanted his attention, this was definitely not the way to go about it. It wasn’t surprising she was interested in him – not arrogance on his part, or any overestimation of his attractiveness, so much as his acceptance he was probably the only eligible man on staff who was close to the witch’s age. It was still _frustrating_. Even if he was technically single, he hadn’t recovered from his last relationship and had no interest in entering another anytime soon. Plus, he didn’t think he could ever think of Madame Pomfrey – due to become a domineering, smart-lipped school nurse – in a romantic capacity, even if he _were_ inclined to give it a go.

When he didn’t respond to her, Pomfrey pointed out, “You’re smiling,” as if he was unaware of his own facial expressions.

She poured herself a cup of tea, adding three tooth-rotting sugars and stirring noisily. Looking back to Celeste in the hopes she might offer him a handy escape route, he found she was gone, having finished breakfast while he read Boris’ letter. No help there, then. Nobody was coming to save him.

   Same old, same old.

Heaving a sigh, he coolly said, “I just received a letter from a friend, Miss Pomfrey.” Quickly draining his full, scalding cup of tea, he added, “Now, I have a–”

“Oh, you can call me Poppy,” Pomfrey interrupted with a wan smile. “Please, I would prefer it, Hadrian. It _is_ Hadrian, right?”

Unfortunately, yes – yes it was.

Sighing again, Harry agreed, “It is… And, like I was trying to say, Slughorn’s got me on some delicate potions right now.” His upper lip curled back in a disgrace of a smile, making him feel an awful lot like Snape always looked – was it the _profession_ that made the man a dour bastard… or just the company? “Can’t stay – don’t want the lab to explode.”

“Oh – but Hadrian, I’m sure Horace will look in on them. Won’t you stay for another cup of tea? I’d love to hear about what you’re brewing,” she chirped pleadingly. “Potions and healing have so much common ground. I’m only a passable brewer – perhaps you can teach me a thing or two? Horace always seems so busy…”

Beating back another sigh, Harry overtly checked his watch.

Feigning downheartedness, he said, “No, sorry, I really can’t. Slughorn’s got other things to do right now. Doing things when he can’t is the whole reason I’m here. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I stayed, nice as your company is, _Poppy_.”

Harry made a break for it while Pomfrey was giving him a fluttery smile at his use of her first name. Striding from the Great Hall like a thus far unobservant manticore was on his tail – it could turn and spot him, claw him, eat him at any moment! – he felt more and more like Snape by the second. True, Harry was robed in blue not black, but he could still… Ah, yes, like that!

He stirred the barest hint of a breeze along his hem and up the back of his legs, causing his robes to billow out behind him dramatically… His insides cackled with something between satisfaction and twisted delight. As soon as he was past the Hall’s doors, he turned sharply, feeling his robes whip away, following half a second later.

Heading down a staircase that bypassed the basement in favour of the dungeons, Harry wondered if, like him, Snape had the bloodtrait for meteoromancy. He couldn’t come to a conclusion because he wasn’t sure what family the man came from. Sure, Snape had the dark hair of House Black and the dark eyes of House Mercia, but _they_ also tended to have a near-preternatural beauty about them, both having intermarried with sidhe quite a lot. Maybe the man’s mother – Snape wasn’t a magical surname, so his father was halfblood at most – was a Mockridge. _That_ family – and its remaining vassals – was cursed… Would certainly explain the old git’s demeanor.

Entering his lab – three potions in various states of completion awaited him – Harry mused he knew jack about House Mockridge, other than the sparse information the tutors Jameson hired could tell him (before two of them resigned their positions because Harry was an ‘unteachable little shit’… Before one of them tried to kill him and one died on the job).

A very long time ago, before the Statutes of Secrecy were put in place, muggles and magicals still living side-by-side in some degree of peace, there were Houses. Big, magical families claimed land all across Europe and any smaller families living in these areas owed them fealty. It was a normal system, for the time – lords and serfs – including the part where there was a worrying amount of infighting among Great Houses. Eventually, there were only fourteen left.

Given fast-growing unrest in the muggle population, a council was founded to deal with the problem. The Head of each Great House was on it, along with the Heads of Houses that owed them fealty. There were talks and, though the decision to hide from the muggles wasn’t made just yet, the Great Houses decided to sign a treaty saying they wouldn’t fight among themselves anymore but work through their grievances democratically.

        Thirteen Houses signed – one did not.

House Mockridge, according to his third tutor, was smaller than most but fiercer than many. First, they refused to sign the truce agreement with the other Great Houses, then they wouldn't bother helping when muggles began systematically searching out any and all wizards in their towns. Lots of Minor Houses were destroyed over the course of a decade or so. In retaliation, the Thirteen cursed the Mockridges. Best Harry remembered, the curse said House Mockridge would ‘forever persevere but all they loved would fall to ash’, or something. Not pleasant stuff. Basically, their lives would be shit but they wouldn’t die.

Slowly, under threat of fire from muggles like the rest of Magical Europe, Mockridge lost a lot of land. The Thirteen weren’t interested in helping them, seeing as they had refused to ally and, because of their neutral stance, dangerous muggle groups had gained a lot of ground across Europe, wasting any magical families that weren’t well trained enough to fight back. Mockridge lost any beauty magic gave them and their numbers began to dwindle. Any Minor House that stuck by them suffered the same fate, to a lesser degree.

That was all Harry could remember. He only really knew that much because Concisus had been a pretty good tutor and, later on, he himself wrote some essays on Objects of Power for creation class at Koschey.

The point was, given how unattractive and depressive Snape was, Harry wouldn’t be surprised if he came from the Cursed House of Mockridge or one of its unfortunate – if loyal – vassals. Harry supposed even he would be miserable and snappish if he got stuck with yellow teeth and greasy hair, everyone he cared about abandoning him or dying... all punishment for mistakes his ancestors made near a thousand years ago.

Worried he might be coming into some sort of mild sympathy for Snape, Harry concentrated on his potions. One looked like it was about to bubble over… Probably forgot to add the tizheruk venom. Oops.

There was a cauldron of Hair Replenisher – probably for Dippet – next to the one that looked set to explode, which was meant to be Burn Salve, and last a small, silver cauldron containing one of his own dubious attempts at inventing Wolfsbane.

After adding the required amount, plus ten percent, of tizheruk venom to the Burn Salve, and a few mint leaves to try and fix his fuck up, Harry turned for his journals.

The double-height lab Harry had been assigned must break into the basement, seeing as there were windows for ventilation set a foot below the high-ceiling, lending just enough natural light to read by. Grateful to the autoarchitecting castle, he leafed through one journal packed with messy scrawl, looking for notes on the glumbumble-and-aconite paste he was using for the Wolfsbane. Usually, that mix was used to _kill_ rogue werewolves – it was harmful to them even in very small doses. Jotted tight in the margins of ancient potions and defence texts from all over the world, though, there were stories suggesting werewolves killed by spears dipped in this paste regained some level of human thought before they died.

Somewhere between a silver cauldron, aconite-paste and mandrakes was the answer to Wolfsbane Potion. Perhaps fluxweed, too… failing that, he could always give his honeysuckle a go… it had pretty pleasant properties. Hmmm…

If he didn’t intend just give up on living in the near future, he might as well work out how to make Wolfsbane. Good as way to spend his time as any, seeing as Slughorn only seemed to want him for stuff even _Harry_ could do in his sleep. He had to fill the days somehow.

Harry knew it wasn’t good to let his mind wander too much. When he had nothing to do, he found himself dwelling on things it was too late to change, falling into a level of self-loathing the Dursley’s would wholeheartedly approve of. Not to mention, when particularly miserable he drank more and ate less, usually languishing on a couch somewhere, second-guessing every decision he’d ever made, until even his thought process failed in favour of the sort of shit-tornado of emotions he really shouldn’t take a closer look at.

There were three types of people in the world: Those who made mistakes and said ‘That shouldn’t have happened', those who declared ‘I’ll do better next time’... and those who knew ‘I’m going to regret this forever’.

  Harry was a member of the last group – he didn’t deny it.

So, he latched onto various projects over the years – some more successful than others. His Organ Rejuvenation Potion was hardly a great triumph, seeing as he used a combination of future-knowledge and fortunate guesswork to concoct it. His attempts to invent portkeys were always a failure – the closest he ever got was a technique called malapparation and a object called a spike. The Veritas Potion was based off the principles of the Calix Veritas – a truth-compulsion cup owned by the Blacks – and had come in handy during the war, as had the Nuntius Charm.

Wolfsbane, though… Wolfsbane was _hard_. It must be doable, though, because it there was no way it was prayers and the tears of small children stopping a wolfed-out Lupin from losing his marbles each full moon. Or maybe it was… Snape _was_  the only person he'd ever known to make it, after all – that man made enough Puffs cry to brew enough Wolfsbane to supply every were on the continent.

From what Harry remembered of third-year, Lupin said the potion made the transformations a lot more comfortable than they were when he was a student. Implication being that the potion was due to be invented sometime between the late seventies and nineteen ninety-three. That was a long time for werewolves to wait for a potion that could make the transformations easier on them and, given Harry was currently the only one who knew about Wolfsbane, it was his duty to try his hand at creating it.

Textbooks he still had from the future were pretty much useless. Third and fourth-year potions at Hogwarts was nowhere near advanced enough for the texts to contain even _hints_ about the Wolfsbane Potion. Currently, his most useful resources were actually _Moste Potente Potions_ , which Hermione got the Polyjuice recipe from in second year, and _the Sons of Herne_ , which, beyond sounding like a real crappy name for a biker gang, was about an old hunting club that went for unusual quarry (including werewolves).

The attack on the Lindendells, along with the Ministry’s disgusting treatment of now-werewolf survivor, eight-year-old Camilia, brought the real need for Wolfsbane into sharp relief. Perhaps, with encouragement and new safety measures, the Wizengamot would reverse the emergency laws stopping little Camilia Lindendell from inheriting her own estate.

With this goal to keep him occupied, he’d spent the last five days raiding Slughorn’s cupboards for rare supplies. Much as the main claimed he wanted Harry as an apprentice so he’d have more free time to conduct research, it couldn’t help but be noticed his store cupboard was a dusty shitehole. Didn’t look like anyone had used it actively in years. Actually, it looked like the acromantula colony had taken up residence.

Still, he had found variegated tentacula leaves and mandrake roots;  _whole_ , unsullied unicorn horns; and even a teeny, tiny crystal phial that seemed to contain basilisk venom. There were plenty of finished potions in the cupboard, too; some were old, unusual ones he hadn’t heard of, sat hip-to-hip alongside more common ones such as Deflating Drafts, Look Sharp and Tri-Concept, to name a few. And a small, half-full bottle of Liquid Luck, sitting innocently on a shelf at hip height, looked like it was unstoppered recently… He wondered who got their ‘perfect’ day.

Harry had steered well clear of a worryingly large bottle marked ‘xxxxx POISON xxxxx’. Fuck knows what was in that. The only potion he could think of called Poison was just a myth, recipe lost to time. How Slughorn would come across instruction for it, or even collect a sample, Harry did _not_ want to know. Or  _why_ the man would, for that matter.

Having liberated a good number of hard-to-come-by ingredients, it was crummy luck he walked straight into Slughorn on his way out. (Honestly, the man had to pick _that day_ to bother checking his stores?) Fortunately, it was easy to smooth the theft over with the Potions Master, who actually looked oddly _delighted_ to catch Harry stealing from him.

“Ah, mandrake leaves and lustigloo – restoration and mental faculty. Oooh… cold aconite and glumbumble – sleeping and anti-hysteria… very potently poisonous in combination… What on earth might you be brewing, my boy?” the man had questioned cheerfully, making Harry feel like a unicorn cornered by a slag – slimy and skittish. “Perhaps,” Slughorn added, hands rubbing together and eyes bright, “you are preparing to delve into the unknown once more? Can I expect another masterpiece such as the Organ Rejuvenation Draught, any time soon? What _are_ you working on?”

“Um…” Harry had mumbled, peddling for time, “I can’t really say. It’d spoil the surprise.”

Slughorn had simply chuckled in good faith, patting Harry on the back even though he could easily be brewing any number of super-nasty, illegal potions to make a mint on the black market. Guess the Potions Master was the trusting sort. Then again, maybe Slughorn was into the black market stuff himself… couldn’t be his teaching salary that let him live in such overdone luxury. He really wouldn't put it past the man to have a few less-than-reputable contacts down the Lanes.

Either way, Harry got away with his purloined supplies and began work. He could hardly call any of his attempts successful but that was okay – he predicted this would take  _years_.

He continued brewing for the next six hours, setting up a Wolfsbane attempt number four after number three went up like a geyser to coat the lab ceiling. Something must have got into there that didn’t belong. If he’d been paying a bit more attention he would know, but he was potting up the dubiously-made Burn Salve when it decided to go off.

It was just his luck for everything to go wrong the minute he turned his back, Harry considered, warily glancing over at the small cauldron of Hair Replenisher gurgling away in the corner before refreshing his rag-rubbing efforts to clean any pesky remnants of the quite-toxic Wolfsbane explosion before it ruined anything else. He didn't see how that beauty potion could possibly blow up but, as Neville – and Seamus, for that matter – often proved in class,  _anything_ could blow up if you were pyr–

_Pop!_

                                           Harry whirled around, instantly toppling off the step-stool he was using to reach the windowsills.

"I's being very sorry, Sir Slug's Apprentice, sir! Mixy did not mean to startle!" squeaked a small voice that was both undoubtedly female and belonged to a house elf.

He groaned from his position on the floor. Something throbbed behind his eyes.

"Don't worry about it," he insisted, despite mentally cursing the little thing into soup.

Really, though, it wasn't as if he didn't fall a good once-a-week minimum, anyway – best to get it out of the way early on.

The little elf leaned over him, invading his personal space to the degree Harry jerked back and thwacked his head against the floor again. "I's having lunch for you, Sir Slug's Apprentice, sir," she announced chirpily and he spotted a glint of reflected sunlight off a silver platter.

Harry managed to slump into a sitting position at his desk in the small office-space just off the lab. The lunch turned out to be a couple of ox-tongue and horseradish sandwiches and a canter of mead. 

"Can I's be getting, master Sir Slug's Appre–"

                                                                                "Just ' _Harry_ ' would be fine, uh– Oh, I didn't ask your name..."

The elf stared at him with wide, luminescent-green eyes. "I is being Mixy, master Apprentice Harry, sir! Can I be getting yous anything else?"

He shook his head and thanked her. She vanished with a smaller crack than the one she arrived with... or he was just really jumpy and... He was just an idiot, he decided with a sigh. Hardly the elf's fault a broken twig could have him starting a forest fire – not his best day, that.

Harry was just about to dig into his sandwiches when he realised there weren't any books, or records, or anything at all down here yet that didn't smell like arse and/or have the potential to poison him if he looked at it the wrong way. He really ought to bring his record player down tomorrow, so he didn't die of boredom; potions-making involved a lot of waiting around, making sure nothing unexpected happened.

A thought struck him.

"Mixy!" he called, hoping the Hogwarts elves had as preternaturally keen hearing as the ones kept by the Potters.

They did. The little elf popped back into the room wearing an expectant expression. 

"Can Mixy be helping sir with something after alls?"

"Yes. I was wondering if you have a copy of today's Prophet knocking around. Don't worry if not but–"

                       The elf was already gone. An instant later she was back, clutching a copy of the newspaper in her long fingers.

                                                                             "–it gets a bit boring down here... Right, thanks Mixy," he said, accepting the paper from her, then telling her  _no_ , there really wasn't anything else he needed this time.

"Well, you just calls Mixy if there is. I's much liking the young new master," the elf decided with a broad, mildly disturbing smile.

Great. Looked like he just attracted all the stalker elves... As if Dobby, who was destined to kill anyone whose life he tried to save, and Bea, who routinely chased people with rolling pins and wooden spoons, weren't bad enough... Maybe he could gather all the little crazies up and start a house elf army? If you wanted to revolt against the rich numpties – with whom he was technically affiliated himself – then the elves were a great place to start, already lurking in kitchens and laundries on the  _inside_. Good job, Harry, guessed, he had no such intentions.

He sighed as the elf left and glanced through at the Hair Replenisher which, luckily, still hadn't worked out how to explode. Turning back to the plate of sandwiches, he grabbed one up, leaned his chair back on two legs in a way that would make his mother swat him and shook open the prophet. Harry almost choked at immediately finding himself face to face with a large photo of a stern Dumbledore wearing Whig-cream Wizengamot robes. 

Great. What superb new bill had the stupid twat managed to push through now? Perhaps, all Dark theory classes were going to be scrapped in Islen schools? Or vampires were now going to be required, despite the health risks (big ones, if you were a vampire), to go to their local tanning salon and top themselves up until they suitably fell between caramel-cream and pharaoh's-gold (Petunia's hallway and kitchen cabinets respectively) on the Dulux colour chart... Or maybe, werewolves were now to be fitted with explosive collars that would take of their heads if they happened to stray outside a small set zone, whether it be the full moon or not. Or, and this was his personal favourite guess, Dumbledore had just declared that everyone had to wear flamingo suits on Wednesdays (but would be expected to get together for a mass funky-chicken on Saturday nights and – all together now! – do the ostrich head-bury the rest of the week).

The story turned out to be none of these things. Perhaps not surprising, as the headline didn't say something like _VENERATED WAR HERO DEAD_... More's the pity. Still, there was always tomorrow.

Much the content of the story was easily inferred from the headline. Bad-mannerly washing down a mouthful of ox-tongue sandwich with juice, Harry read: 

MINISTRY CARRIAGE PLUMMETS WITH PASSENGERS  
Accident or Assassination Attempt?

Harry snorted at this and said, to nobody in particular, "Well, would you look at that... Even lifts want shot of him."

 'Today's working day at the Ministry of Magic began in as orderly a fashion as any other since the conclusion of the war against the Dark Lord Grindelwald. Each day, the hundreds of witches and wizards, who toil away to keep our great nation running smoothly, go about their business, barely noticing the one element of the Ministry that makes it possible for each of them to reach their departments of employment: the carriages. The sun rose just before five this morning, chased by an early start for the Wizengamot, who were in session until eleven, usual since the destruction of the Ancient and Most Noble Great House of Lindendell, Sixth of the Thirteen, this past May.  
 Even as the Wizengamot sat and staff performed their collective duties to keep us all safe, events most harrowing had been set into motion. The most esteemed members of the Wizengamot retired to take lunch, while one of their number forwent refreshment to attend a short appointment at the Department of International Magical Cooperation. Concurrently, a young wizard was making enquiries at the Floo Regulation Authority regarding having his recently inherited home joined to the network which links wizarding  
households together. Neither knew what horror was soon to become them. Nothing seemed amiss at the Ministry until  

half-past eleven, when three carriages, on transit between various departments, came into difficulties.  
_"It was like riding a twig in the Cheltenham,"_ we were told by Maisy Mitchells, a member of the Department of Magical Games and Sportsmanship, who was travelling from the Atrium to her office. _"Today was supposed to be my day off but a colleague was sick and I came in to cover for her. I wasn't even supposed to be here... The lift shot upwards at least three times faster than it usually does, and it was rattling around. We span a few times, before crashing into the DoM mezzanine. It was terrifying."_  
 For those who do not recall, the Cheltenham Marathon is an annual broomstick race that has been infamous since 1869, when seventeen contestants lost their lives and two dozen others sustained injury.  
 Two of the runaway carriages were quickly recovered by maintenance staff, each having been close to a connecting landing, and all passengers alighted safely. Magical Maintenance was stumped, however, to find the third carriage resisted all attempts to get it moving again. When staff called it back to dock at the Atrium, the carriage did not respond; less than five minutes later, diagnostics showed the carriage had begun to move at great speeds  

__

__

__

__

towards the Department of Mysteries.  
 The carriage had fallen! It was out of control.  
_"It must have been no fewer than thirty wizards, all casting the Summoning Charm, it took to stop the carriage's fall! It was like a force was pulling it down into the darkness, tugging against us,"_ recounts one maintenance worker. _"If I didn't know better, I would say this was no accident."_  
 That is the professional opinion of just one Ministry official present at the scene. _'This was no accident.'_  
 A short time later, the carriage in question was successfully recovered to the Atrium, battered but yet intact. Why do the circumstances surrounding this incident seem so suspect? Why, because this particular carriage happened to be occupied by no other than Lord Albus Dumbledore and one of his former students, with whom he was conversing.  
 Was this an attempt on Lord Dumbledore's life?  
 As you will all no doubt be aware, Lord Dumbledore, by Royal Writ newly Earl of Avon's Glen, is responsible for last summer's most heroic defeat of the dangerous European Dark Lord responsible for perpetrating the Great War that... '

  

Harry, for his part, thought this was _very_ funny. In fact, he laughed so hard, the balanced back legs of his chair broke, depositing him on the floor for the second time in as many hours. In the lab next door, Wolfsbane number four poured out over the rim of its cauldron like thick, green sea foam and rushed across the flagstones, fizzing madly. He really couldn't bring himself to care...

                                    "Couldn't have happened to a better bloke!"

                                                 ...at least, until the ruined Wolfsbane rose up, like gripped by the moon, that tidal force, and engulfed the Hair Replenisher... which finally achieved its greatest ambition and promptly exploded. It was this moment, while he was heaped on the floor surrounded by catapulted sandwiches and dripping juice and potion explosion, Slughorn chose to waltz into the the lab. Just Harry's luck.

"Deary me!" the man exclaimed, surveying the chaos. "Gracious, what has happened here?"

Harry gracelessly picked himself up and ordered the juice-soggy sandwiches back to their platter with an hurried jab of his wand. "Sorry, sir. I was having lunch and got distracted. Won't happen again." 

"Never say never, my boy... And is _this_ –" Slughorn bent down to lift and shake off the copy of _the Prophet_ "–what captured your attention? Oh, yes... Albus' run in with the Ministry's carriages... quite unfortunate. Still, all's well that ends well, is it not?" Then, without waiting for a response of affirmation or denial from Harry, the man clapped his hands and went on, "Not to worry about the mess – nothing a few flicks of the wand cannot solve. Some of the best discoveries come from mistakes, I have found. But I did not come down here to check on the Headmaster's, rather ineffectual in his case, haircare brew. No, I wished to ask you if you would attend a little soiree I'm hosting next week?"

"A soiree, sir?"

"Indeed so! I host them periodically to catch up with old students and associates. I am glad to call Hogwarts my home but, I fear, it is a little out of the way for most. It's a rare day when I bump into friends, as I have little need to traipse down Vertic Alley on a daily basis." The man spread his arms wide, adding, "Yet here I have the most magnificent home! Why not invite others here, I say, for a little get-together, let our lovely school's graduates come and reminisce of the good-old-days when all they had to worry over was late essays and not being caught out of bounds! My old students and, in fact, many who attended here, often jump at the chance!" 

Harry held back the urge to grumble. A party – great, just what he liked. Somehow, he got the feeling 'little get-together' meant something very different to Slughorn than to him.

Nonetheless, he plastered on a weak smile and said, "Sounds fun. When is it?"

"Next Wednesday, magic and weather permitting," Slughorn said, nodding to himself as if in reässurance. "Can I trust you will be there?"

Scooping up some of the Wolfsbane-Hair Replenisher foam into a pot for later examination, Harry nodded with no sign of reluctance. "Of course, sir – sounds good."

"Excellent, excellent! I will make sure everyone knows you shall be in attendance."

Then, without chance for Harry to object on the principle of that last bit, the man was gone. Harry hung his head in defeat, wondering why it felt like he had just been carefully backed into a corner by a man who was, by all accounts, not even the most cunning of Slytherins. Hopefully, he would be able to slip away sometime during Slughorn's 'soiree'.

"Oh, and Hadrian?" Slughorn said, his head popping back round the lab door. "If I were you I wouldn't try mixing aconite with tizheruk venom again. It is an alkaloid and reacts rather poorly with the proteins in the venom – I'm surprised you weren't shocked, actually... that can happen. Must have been offset by the rosemary in the Hair Replenisher. Quite odd..."

Wait... _what?_ The tizheruk venom was meant for the Burn Salve, not the Wolfsbane... 

Damn it! It must have been contaminated when the Burn Salve blew up. Urhg, perhaps Snape was right... Harry wasn't cut out for potions at all. He guessed he would just have to hope Slughorn continued to be oblivious to this fact.


	12. Chapter 12

_posted: 2018-08-20_  
_edits: typo – 'wars' instead of 'ears'_

  

**Harry did not shuffle uncomfortably.** He was very careful not to, as he watched the high-society soiree spin and dance and laugh and banter in the main ballroom. He was in an antechamber, waiting stiffly to be seen by somebody very important, judging by the secretive summons he received two days prior. 

He absently inspected a blush-pink, enormous diamond lily sitting on a low table near the fireplace; flickers of light reflected off it, looking like they were trapped inside the sculpture – it made him think of how his mother must have been, all graceful curves and flares of bright beauty – yet solid, unbreakable. She told Voldemort to spare  _him_ and take her instead. He wondered, for a dark moment, if from whatever afterlife there was she lay, lamenting her foolish choice. Her death for a son who would never know her and could not honour her... who couldn't even manage to stay in his correct  _time_ , let alone avenge her senseless slaughter.

Buried so deep in sudden self-loathing, Harry was startled when somebody cleared their throat. For such an uncouth action, it was a delicate, feminine sound. He slowly turned, careful not to drop the lily.

He nearly did, despite himself.

The sound of the party was suddenly muffled, though he knew no real change had come about. It was all in his head, heart deciding to leap to a gallop as he saw exactly  _who_ had summoned him here tonight.

Remembering a thousand etiquette books forced upon him in the last few years, Harry placed the stone flower back on the table with a tiny  _clink_ and approached the woman before him. He dropped to one knee in the most fluid way he could manage, placed his closed left hand down on the floor beside him and held his wand horizontal, balanced across his unfolded palm.

"Your Imperial Majesty," he breathed, shocked to find himself before her. What did he have to say next– oh, yeah, "My wand and magic are yours to wield. My will is yours."

"My will is that you abide by freedom," Empress Natal'ya replied gently, accent lilting lightly across the sentence. "By my honour, you may. Please, come, I would speak with you."

With her ancient oath, she had now acknowledged face to face that he was her subject and she his ruler. He could now address her as simply 'your Majesty', when required.

"How is your leg," the Empress queried gently. "I do hope our healers were able to return it to fullness?"

"Oh,  _yes_ , your Majesty. They were very good – I expected to lose it outright."

A waterfall of gems glittered at the dark-haired witch's throat and ears as she shook her head with a mild laugh. "We could not have that, Hadrian Charlusovitch. What use could you possibly be with but one leg?"

_Use?_

"None at all, your Majesty," he answered uncertainly.

"Fret not, my subject. I have not called you here for a scalding, as one must with unruly children. You are a man by my eye and have been brought justly to my attention for your deeds. Without request nor beg of reward, you have taken it upon yourself to aid this Bountiful Land in these terrible times of strife," the Empress surmised efficiently, with little inflexion.

The royal ran her hands down the front of her blue, crushed velvet gown, appearing deeply thoughtful. He noticed her there were many bracelets at her wrists but no rings upon her fingers.

"You heedlessly risked your life for my magicless subjects in Sankt-Peterburg. I would know, Hadrian Charlusovitch, if, having seen the outcome of those actions, the personal agonies, if you would be so foolish as to commit to the same undertaking again, should the chance come?"

He did not know what she was looking for here – did she want him to admit he was an idiot of the highest order and never should have gone off to fight alone? Because  _that_ wasn't true. He could have known that his leg would be completely  _torn off_ and he still would have done what he did in a heartbeat. Did it matter that he nearly died to save muggles? Did she believe him a bigot who thought them worthless for the magicals they outnumbered by the million?

"I grow impatient. Knowing the pain you would suffer for your actions, would you yet have done them?"

"Yes," he admitted defeatedly.

Damn him to hell for being stupid... You should never lie to the Empress and yes, he was a stupid boy who wouldn't learn from his mistakes, not if he thought there was the  _slimmest_ chance he could make a difference.

The room was silent but for the crackling fire for several minutes, as the Empress seemed to consider his response. Was he going to be thrown out of Rus? Had he screwed up so badly that she would have him sent to  _prison_?

Just as he really began to panic, the witch who held his fate in her hands spoke again.

"Good," she said firmly. "Be that the case, I have work for you."

 

_–meeting between Harry and Her Imperial Highness, Tsaress Natal'ya Nikolayevna, winter 1942_

 

 

 

 _june_  
the pointlessness of schmoozing

   
 

**GLAZUNOV'S _SUMMER_ WASHED over the crowded lawn.  **

Clutching a tray of liberated hors-d'oeuvres like a shield to fend people off with, Harry took his akevitt straight, staring at the strange little appetisers suspiciously (some sort of savoury profiteroles filled with salmon mousse, topped with a mauve cheese?). He grimaced as he swallowed his drink down, staring out from beneath the willow he secluded himself under in vain attempt to hide from the festivities.

Above, the sky was a perfect screen of blue, cloudlessly encasing the scorching sun. Wide lawns sloped their way down to a shore of smooth, white pebbles and greige silt, which was gently caressed by the water of the lake. A wide mead of long grassed and vividly coloured ox-eye daisies bordered the South Lawn; they and the Great Lake stirred beneath the continuous, pale breeze sweeping across the grounds to mercifully take the edge off the high, balmy heat of midday.

Harry had memories of standing on that spot of shoreline, trying to console Hagrid as the giant man stormed over the fate of Buckbeak, skimming stones the size of paving slabs. It might as well have been a lifetime away for all the connexion he felt to those moments now...

All in all, far as most people were concerned, the picture of today was one of perfection: A grand, ancient castle bathed in sunlight; an expanse of manicured and wild grounds, in equal measure; all encompassed by the imposing, protective mountains on one side and the deadly-beautiful Forbidden Forest on the other. Birds tittered gaily and all was right with the world...

Or it might've been, if Harry could ignore the much louder, far more aggravating chatter submerging the gramophone and its avian accompaniment.

Juxtaposed against the idyllic backdrop of an Alban summer, more than a hundred witches and wizards thronged. Most could be characterised by that 'effortless',  _faked_ sort of grace that seemed to come instinctively to parvenus. They were all doing the one thing Islenders did best – gossiping. Oh, Harry was sure they'd call lit  _socialising_... but he didn't have any illusions over what that really meant; these people were making alliances, backstabbing, swapping scandalous stories and Mrs This and Lord That (seen doing something-or-other Merlin-knows-where), and generally making every attempt to climb the Wizarding World's class ladder.

Proudly in the centre of it all, pulling string and subtly directing proceedings like the conductor of an enormous, free-range orchestra, was Slughorn.

Harry's boss wore a plum waistcoat – clearly the man's favourite – and embroidered over-robe to match; the whole ensemble touched on flamboyant but, mercifully, achieved nowhere near the level of London Pride-ostentatious Dumbledore adopted sometime in the future. The Potions Master also wore a stubby, wide-brimmed hat–

 _"So much time in the dungeons does leave one awfully susceptible to sunlight,"_ Slughorn had said when he donned it.

                                                                            –and waved about a glass of crème-caraway, seeds and froth sloshing over the rim of the cup as he enthusiastically recounted some story or another. Whatever the man said, the small group of wizards around him seemed amused, hanging on Slughorn's every word the same way their ladies clung to their arms.

Sure the young couples were far from genuine, Harry wrinkled his nose. Slughorn's hangers-on were only humouring him, hoping for a leg-up in this-industry or that-industry, knowing the Potions Master was a sucker for a hopeful cause. This party was politics at its worst – hidden behind pomp and prettiness.

It was easy to spot the most aspiring of the middle-classes because their clothes were the most elaborate, frivolous, aimed to scream wealth at everyone. The actual nobility, of who a few were present, stood out from the crowd for their unremarkable clothing, bordering on dull next to the fantastic outfits on their poorer fellows. For the most part, the heirs and heiresses – newly graduated and with a soft spot for the Potions Professor – closest to the Thirteen preferred high-quality, expensive robes designed by the most famous individuals of the age, without the over-embellishment and gaudy ornamentation the faux-aristocracy liked.

   Oh, brother... He was starting to sound like his mother!

Catherine 'call me Cat' Stephenson was the exception proving the rule.

Harry didn't see her approach him – her footfalls were always lighter than any felines – but would bet his inheritance she  _sauntered_ over. When he turned, finding himself with an inappropriate eyeful of her, she grinned lasciviously and handed him a fresh glass of akevitt.

"Neat, just like you," she purred, tone as sensuously loaded as ever.

Despite himself, Harry smiled thinly at her. Cat always managed to amuse and piss him off at the same time.

Brandishing his platter of canapés in her general direction, he drily returned, "Cheesy, just like you."

Her following words were short but her smile only grew at the jibe. "I shall have you know I have never been considered cheap in my life!"

_Yeah, that's because you're a galleon-whore. Expensive lay._

Her tone only pretended to be scandalised as she simpered, "Daddy's the editor of  _Glamique_ and would never allow such a thing."

Taking one of the offered hors-d'oeuvres and daintily putting it in her mouth – if you can do anything  _daintily_ with long, devil-red nails and half a dozen diamond rings on – adding, "Besides, you never thought so when we first met, did you now?" 

He grimaced at the reminder. "I was fifteen – you turned up for my Presentation in a muggle  _swimming costume_. Everyone thought you were cheap... just eyes were too fixed on your bubs to say anything. Way I remember it, I was just ready to take a shot at my mates for letting some random, geld-grabbing harlot in, when your mum showed up to scold you."

That wasn't entirely true. He'd been a teenage boy, after all – more interested in the female form than caring for possible gold-diggers. 

Cat shrugged unabashedly. "What can I say? I just came from the beach – I was in a hurry."

Harry snorted, causing a canapé to lodge in his throat. Through splutters, he managed to choke out, "In a hurry? One of your nipples made a break for it – what the hell'd you been doing?"

She raised one tan finger, tapping it to the side of her nose. "Or, more accurately,  _who_..." She winked, lips curled up like the proverbial niffler that got the jewels.

He gave a faint laugh, shaking his head tiredly at her antics. The witch seemed to be in a good mood, if her uncommonly playful words were anything to go by, and, to be fair, it was better than sulking alone. Cat's temperament did tend to turn faster than the tides, catching you completely off-guard sometimes, but she didn't favour protocol any more than he did. If she did, she wouldn't be able to be what she was... that being – and there really was no other term for it – a complete slut. _Anyone once_ was her motto. The school brooms saw less arse.

"You'll never be able to marry, you know? You're the last Stephenson but nobody's going to want the local broom, no matter how pretty the wrappings."

In hindsight, it was a callous comment. Sometimes his mouth went off in time with his mind, fucking things up. He did say it more jokingly than cruelly... Nonetheless, it set her of.

"Oh yes... because I see  _you_ are doing so much better! I mean,  _clearly_ you have to beat them off like bludgers." Her frown was ugly, tone now genuinely scathing. "Oh no, wait... you're  _single_ , are you not? How long did the last one keep? A year, thereabouts, before she had enough of you."

Harry's jaw clenched, posture stiff with the effort not to retort.

Still, Cat continued, knowing how weak a point this subject was for him. "Of course, if  _I_ was stuck with you I suppose I may have gone off the edge too. You can hardly  _blame_ the poor girl." Seeing the effect her words were having on him, she made to drive the blade in an inch deeper. "Merlin, even death is better than being tied to  _you_ , isn't it?"

Holstered up his right sleeve, his yew and cypress wand tingled against his skin through the cotton of his shirt, magical-static humming up and down it. He knew the runes had flared to life.

Not seeming to spot the danger, Cat merrily went on. "That is exactly your problem, Hadrian Potter – so damn  _righteous_! And where's it got you? Half your family dead or insane, years stuck in Nurmengard. Bravo!" she half-bowed in false respect, patronising clap on her hands. " _Really_ , bravo!"

Breathing deep to calm himself, he tried to keep in mind not only was Cat predisposed to saying stupid things when riled, she didn't even know the full story, couldn't understand the complexity of the hows and whys that led his life to this point. She spoke of things she had no business to, Vassal to Potter or not.

He held her indelible spuriousness aloft when he didn't give her a taste of the wrong end of his wand – which was what anyone else would've got right now. No, he settled for a slow, pedantic clap. He wasn't coming up cursing but he wasn't going to bend over and spread 'em, either.

"Yeah,  _well done_. Again, you're super-eager to prove why the Hat wouldn't put you in Slytherin with the rest of your family," he said blandly, knowing it was one of  _her_ sore points. "Too thick for Ravenclaw, loyal only to yourself... The poor Gryffindor idiot–"  _sorry old House_ "–mouth running off with her sense whenever she's upset, when she perceives people are speaking out of turn."

Harry watched his words hit home. She didn't back down; now, her lips twisted into a baleful sneer.

"Better jump ahead than end up like  _you_. All passive and useless, hiding at Hogwarts because the world is just too much," she mocked superciliously. "I bet Sluggy barely did a thing – you surely must have jumped at the chance of living in a wet, empty dungeon... After all,  _it's about what you're used to_."

She paused briefly to draw breath, ploughing on, " _And_ I heard you refuse to marry, family line be damned... Maybe it is for the best – any child of yours wouldn't be fit to run a  _snail farm_ , let alone head up one of the Thirteen."

During a gap in her tirade, he swallowed one of the weird canapés and asked, "Are you quite done?" with the same smooth coldness his grandmother often employed.

Cat gave a great, heaving inhale, breathing out slowly as she seemed to contemplate his query. "Yes," she eventually decided, voice upturning dramatically in an instant, "I think so... So, how about it, then?"

It took a ton of effort not to sigh or roll his eyes. "So how about  _what_ , Catherine?"

"You, me, a filched bottle of bubbly and some of that cream and cherries over there," she suggested in a low, hopeful tone, gesturing towards the mountainous desserts the elves outdid themselves with for the soiree. "And a nice, dark corner..."

Scoffing, Harry chose another canapé.

It was laughable how fast Cat could go from insulting him to offering to spread her legs for him. He was fairly certain she was mental. Hadn't she just been saying – rudely and mildly traitorously, considering her families position to his – a scant few minutes ago, no woman would put up with him? Of course, marriage probably wasn't what Cat wanted to lay on the table when she spoke of 'dark corners and cream'. Lack of marriage prospects notwithstanding, the woman really was mad if she thought he had any interest in getting to know her more intimately when she constantly made him want to blow her head of in a burst of brain matter, bone and blood. In many respects, she was a disturbing nineteen-forties mix of Draco Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson – arrogant, snobby, whiny and lewd.

When she didn't immediately sense she'd outstayed her welcome and bugger off, he pinned her with his nastiest stare. The same one he used on Colina when the man threatened his mother's life.

"Uh  _no_ ," he said sharply, words brisk and to the point so she couldn't claim confusion. "If I ever want to be a cuckold," he added a bit spitefully, "you'll receive my first owl – guarantee you that."

Her mouth returned to its resting sneer, eyes burning with a hot fire that one day would probably undo some poor guy. Not on this occasion, though... Harry was immune to her wiles and fury both. 

"Well, no crying to me in twenty years, when you are all alone in the dungeons with nothing to show for your life but a load of dusty books and potions, not sure you can get out of bed day-in and day-out just to face hordes of squalling firsties. Just look at  _Slughorn_ ," she drawled, nodding in the Potions Master's direction.

Harry glanced across the lawn to see the man in question performing some kind of complex waltz with a middle-aged witch he didn't recognise.

"Surely you don't want to end up as  _that_?"

He downed his latest drink bitterly. " _Anything_ 's better than ending up in  _you_ ," he spat as harshly as he could, finally chasing the shameless woman from under his tree.

 _Well, that was happy-fun_ , he thought with sardonic cheer. 

On some level, he really  _did_ enjoy Cat's company. She was so uncouth and outrageous as to be a breath of fresh air in comparison to most his peers; the others were scared of offending him, resultantly treating him like a figure to be deferred to. The banter – the outright insults, even – flying between he and the blonde witch had a fire he hadn't experienced since his early days at Hogwarts, when he kept a passionate enmity with Malfoy and the boy's lackeys. Still, longer than five minutes with the woman was more than the average, reasonable man could handle without reaching for a bottle of Boudica's Bane; best to make interactions with her fast and to the point. Five minutes, though, was enough to liven up any event and blow off a bit of metaphorical steam...

After Cat swung off with her tail tucked firmly between her thighs, the party returned to the same slow, dull affair it was from the start.

The afternoon seemed to drag on and on. The only evidence time moved was his slowly emptying tray of snacks and the sun's gradual passing from directly overhead. Harry thought he got past all the dreaded socialising and parties once he left Natasha's Court. After all, surely life as a potioneer wasn't particularly sociable or something that made you popular? Just look at Snape... Harry highly doubted he was high on  _anyone_ 's Yule list.

His future-assumptions weren't just being called into question by Slughorn's lifestyle – they were completely shattered. Harry hoped most the party-goers would make their excuses and leave as evening set in. Yet, even as the mountains were cast shadowy, threatening to engulf the sun, things were still in full swing.

Even the Potions Master, eventually couldn't ignore how sodding late it'd got – gone ten, for Circe's sake! – or the sight of sunset hovering above the lake.

"Dear me, would you all  _look at the time_ ," the man cried over-the-toply, giving an exaggerated glance at his pocket watch. "I dare say it is about time we called it a day..."

A susurrus of dissent rose among the guests.

Looking mighty pleased with himself, Slughorn counter-suggested, "Or perhaps we could finish the evening in my quarters? I would hazard a guess at the house elves being  _most_ pleased to provide us with more food and drink... For those who wish to stay?"

_Oh, by the gods... please don't let this turn into an orgy._

There was only so much Harry could take... and he wouldn't put it past Slughorn to be an old perv.

Those remaining turned out to be about twenty people. Somehow, though, after the opening of Slughorn's chambers, the number of guests seemed to mysteriously increase. Word had apparently got out that 'Old Sluggy' was throwing a 'marvellous shindig' up at Hogwarts, so now Ministry drones, finally bored of slogging their way into overtime, began arriving in their droves.

To his dismay, his stupid boss now wanted to introduce him to a lot of people. Harry began to suspect the original purpose of this part was 'look at my fine new acquisition' and that the man was a bit put out at him for having hidden under a tree all afternoon, scuppering his plans. 

There was Abigail Pringle, a nice, warm-faced witch in a muggle dress, whose blonde pigtails made her look even younger than she probably was; an early-days Florean Fortescue, who would one day own the ice cream parlour in Diagon but for now spent his time as a dessert chef at some posh restaurant in Vertic Alley; Ludwig Bagman, heralded to soon take the reigns in the Department of Magical Games and Sportsmanship; Constant Mercia, a wizard in a  _very_ prominent position on the Wizengamot, hailing from the Thirteen himself; Ferdinand Franc, who just became the youngest wizard in the Isles to ever get accepted as a fully-accredited healer... The list went on and on, until Harry felt like it was his first day back at Hogwarts all over again.

Ultimately, most people noticed how boring he was or were observant enough, unlike Slughorn, to tell he really didn't want to talk; his multitude of new acquaintances wandered out of conversation to raid the buffet table or dance, growing merry under his boss' liberally provided beverages. This left Harry mainly to himself – just the way he liked it.

Skulking along the edge of the room, he watched in amusement as a young woman – probably one of last year's graduates – got into a spirited fight with Slughorn's gramophone, which kept refusing to play the muggle records she brought with her. Another party-goer came to her rescue, helping her retrieve her feathery fascinator from the gramophone's hungry, angry speaker horn. The two set about convincing the enchanted contraption to just play was it was damn well told.

Harry did find himself chuckling quietly at the absurdity of the get-together, flushed from a few to many cocktails. Besides the fight with the gramophone, several conjured guineafowl were pecking squealing women's ankles, tugging at the back of their dresses; some wizards were playing tabletop quidditch on one of the buffet tables, tiny bludgers cannoning into punch bowls, spraying the audience with sticky pink and orange; and at least three obnoxious drink pitchers floated about, forcefully refilling any glass even a little low. He ended up staring vacantly at a pair of indecently entwined shadows behind some drapes – clearly Cat didn't go crawl home yet – and, therefore, was startled when a heavy hand slapped down on his shoulder.

"So, this is where you have been hiding yourself, Hadrian my lad! Not one for the dancefloor, I see," Slughorn said brightly, glancing down at Harry's very still feet. "The loss of a great many young ladies."

As Harry tore his eyes away, one of the shadowy figures was performing some sort of striptease for the other. He raised his eyebrows innocently, claiming, "Not really hiding, sir. Just... enjoying the ambience."

"I'm sure, I'm sure," Slughorn nodded, not sounding at all putout. "Quite the turnout, is it not? But, here I have someone wonderful to introduce you to. This here is a favourite – all time favourite! – student of mine! A brilliant young mind – you simply  _must_ get along!"

Frustratedly taking another sip of his too-sweet beverage – hadn't he made nice with  _enough_ people yet? – Harry turned with carefully feigned interest towards whoever the Potions Master insisted on introducing him to this time...

                                                                          and the world seemed to shudder, then ground to a halt.

Every last drop of Harry's now-unfaked attention focused on the newcomer, glued on the man's hauntingly familiar and undeniably handsome face. His ears grew too numb to catch whatever drivel Slughorn was peddling now. The sound of his employer's large voice dulled to a faint annoying hum; the clamour of the party became more distant than strident, washing over Harry like he was suddenly in the next room... All hue drained from the green- and caramel-draped walls, tapestries lost their detail and the people milling about faded into sepia – just like in a memory he once saw. Time began to speed, locally to himself, and out the corner of his eye, he noticed that reflexively the steps of the guests fell into slow motion.

Logically, he had always known the man before him was alive in the forties. It was an academic knowledge, though. To be  _faced_ with him was another thing entirely. Harry's heart beat too fast in his chest again, like following a nightmare – a ceaseless  _thump thump thump_ that wasn't wholly healthy.

       Fucking hell...

His guise was carefully schooled as he looked up into the similarly inexpressive visage of Tom Riddle, drinking in the minutiae: Riddle was a bit taller than Harry's own five ten and his hair was almost as dark. Sharp, sea eyes stared out from beneath a lightly-set brow and above high cheekbones. Following down, there was a strong jaw and strong shoulders. Head held high, posture arrogantly aristocratic, Slytherin's Heir looked much as he had in the misleading memory the Diary showed Harry all those years ago.

   Beyond that,  _everything_ was changed.

No longer dressed in clunky school robes, Harry felt surprised at the woollen, charcoal three-piece Riddle favoured over an expensive linen shirt. Shiny shoes, black tie and a cashmere scarf in deep blue completed the extremely muggle look. It was odd that someone who allegedly had such disdain for muggles would purposely don their clothing...

and it was here, the first claw of doubt sank into Harry's mind...

Moving on from Riddle's suit, he noted the position of the man's wand, up his right sleeve (in a battle-holster if he'd any sense); a second wand hid halfway down the calf of Riddle's left leg (presumably also holstered). The stopper of a potion phial – explosive or poison? – peeked out an almost invisible pouch on one hip, while some sort of ensorceled dagger adorned the other. This guy was paranoid.

A laugh echoed in Harry's mind... of  _course_ Riddle was paranoid – he was  _mini-Voldemort_! Distrustful and manipulative to the extreme, the future Dark Lord had plenty to be overly suspicious about – Harry himself the least of it.

For a fraction of a second, he was incalculably grateful his glasses had been charmed to see strong magical residue ever since an unfortunate incident with a explosive ward in Sebastopol.

With his gaze fixed unblinkingly on Riddle, Harry was startled as in an instant time sped back up to the normal rate, the hammering of his heart coming somewhat stably again. He realised his observation of his old – one-day? – foe only took a couple of seconds. Slughorn was still wittering on about something or other, even.

                         "...st I could have – bar  _you_ , of course, Tom. May I introduce to you my newest student – my rather brilliant apprentice, Heir Hadrian Potter."

   Something inside Harry threatened to snap. Riddle held out an arm, offering his hand.

Blinking at the preferred hand a second, Harry initially ignored the muggle gesture. No, if Riddle was to test him, he was going to give as good as he got. Instead of taking the hand immediately, his feet sprang together and he performed a short bow over it, as was proper when adhering to the ancient, pointless customs of the Thirteen.  _Then_ he shook Riddle's hand as firmly as he could... no way the man was getting better than that.

       A fierce fire sparked behind Riddle's eyes.

Harry's lips shifted into a thin smile. "How d'you do?" he acknowledged with a faint nod, a miniature echo of the bow from before.

"Very pleased to meet you," Riddle replied in kind, his expression much the same.

That sea-storm in the other man's eyes swept across Harry for an instant-forever, pouring through his walls and seeking out his every inlet and cove... then, apparently finding nothing of immediate interest, Riddle's gaze fell back to surreptitiously accounting of the room as a whole. A shark surrounded by schools of oblivious fish.

Noticing he was still gripping Riddle's person, Harry quickly released the other man's hand as if burned; it didn't seem too bright to make direct contact with such a deadly poison for longer than absolutely necessary. If Riddle noticed his odd behaviour, it went unmentioned.

Slughorn coughed falsely–

Had the Potions Master spotted some oddity between his two students that they hadn't themselves?

                                                                          –and announced, " _Tom_ was an absolute favourite of mind. Quite brilliant, I do say. Head Boy, top marks of not only his graduating year but,  _most enticingly_ , the best test scores for  _fifty years."_

Riddle wasn't preening under the praise and nor did he call for his old professor to halt it. Perhaps it was the lack of humbling motion, but the young wizard appeared so  _unnatural_ to Harry; he didn't come across as arrogant so much as merely apathetic to his accolades, as if they were entirely unremarkable, like he could've rolled out of bed after a bad case of spattergroit and still have the best test scores in all the Isles.

This behaviour was hardly what Harry expected of Riddle. Not after the repetitive boasting and downright  _gloating_ – 

_"I was patient... I was sympathetic, I was kind. Ginny simply **loved** me... If I say it myself, Harry, I've always been able to charm the people I needed... It took a very long time for stupid little Ginny to stop trusting her diary."_

                                                                                                    –his twelve-year-old self was subjected to by Shade Tom, the boy who spent half a century trapped as a book. Either Riddle had grown significantly humbler in the short years since getting out of school, or he didn't think his considerable success in various fields was his greatest accomplishment. Perhaps, he felt discovering the Chamber of Secrets was the pinnacle of his school career, despite being unable to receive recognition for it without implicating himself in Myrtle's death.

"Of course, you have probably heard a little of Hadrian, haven't you, Tom?  _Intermagical_ covered the war in Europe quite thoroughly, I believe," said Slughorn. The Potions Master again put a hand on his shoulder as if claiming ownership of him, as he was often want to do – Harry held back the urge to blast it off. Without receiving any response from Riddle, the man went on, "He is by far the youngest wizard to ever hold a title of Lieutenant General in the White Guard."

At this titbit, Riddle looked mildly intrigued. Better nip  _that_ in the bud – holding the attraction of a madman was unwise, even to the traditionally reckless Harry. 

"Actually, I was only ever  _Acting_ Lieutenant General, sir,  _as you well know_ ," Harry corrected, then, turning towards Riddle, said to the future Dark Lord directly, "and I was only Acting Lieutenant General for  _two days_. Horace loves to exaggerate."

Riddle must've been pushing the strong-and-silent archetype because he didn't add anything to the conversation. As comforting as it was that Harry didn't need to trx and hold a real discussion with the man who had one day killed his parents (and weren't the  _tenses_ required to make sense of Riddle's part in his life enough to avoid getting involved with the man?), Slughorn perceived the silence as awkward and insisted on filling it the only way he knew how: bragging on behalf of his 'friends'.

"Two days still counts for  _something_ , Hadrian. I doubt you would have been chosen to take up the reigns if they didn't believe you the best man for the job."

Harry frowned, recalling exactly the shitty reason he came to such a high-ranking position in the cavalry; it had little to do with his expertise and everything to do with the Field Marshal's lack of other options.

Thinking on this, he admitted with chagrin, "I  _was_ the only man for the job."

What followed was a social train wreck orchestrated by a man who had only ever known peace and opulence...

Slughorn smiled at him, mistaking the meaning of his words. "Exactly. You were the only man good enough for the job. I'm certain your superiors considered it a non-decision to have you in such an important role, for however short a time."

Harry swallowed heavily and glanced at Riddle. He could see knowingness in his future-enemy's eyes – the man knew what was coming – but Harry ploughed on none the less.

Jaw stiff and insides colder than the Siberian winter, he told the professor the strongest, most stable voice he could muster, " _No_... I was  _literally_ the  _only_ man for the job."

Slughorn didn't get it, curse his bumbling heart. "You were 'the  _only_  man for the job'," he echoed in confusion. "I'm not really sure what you are trying to imply, Hadrian, but I'm quite certain that–"

                      Harry shouldn't shout – he really shouldn't. And, he  _liked_ Slughorn, dammit, but...

          He didn't shout... but it was a near thing.

More harshly than he should speak to someone who held his contract of employment, Harry cut Slughorn off, biting out, "What I mean is that there  _was_ no one else – everyone else was dead."

              Quite the conversation killer.

Thus it was an exceptionally apologetic, red-faced Slughorn who bid a hasty retreat... Which, unfortunately, left Harry alone with Riddle.

Harry's fingers fiddled habitually with the rim of his glass, a nervous gesture no amount of etiquette lessons managed to break him of. His left foot twitched, beating out a light rhythm on the rug completely out of time with the muggle-jazz the gramophone had finally been cajoled into playing.

Exactly what did you say to the man who had – who  _would_ , in the past-to-come – destroyed your childhood? Comment what lovely weather they'd had for the party today? Ask for advice on manipulating the weak and subjugating the masses? Swap hair-care tips? If Riddle were Lockhart, that last option might've been viable – somehow though, despite it all, even the future-Dark Lord was better company to find himself in than that pathetic, poncy disgrace of a wizard who taught his second year.

As genially as you could sound when silently wishing the person in front of you would drop dead that instant (and that you were on the other side of the world with an airtight alibi, should it actually happen), Harry asked, "So, what do you do, Mister Riddle? Something interesting, I'm sure. I've never heard Slughorn so  _reverent_ of any other friend."

"I'm sure," Riddle echoed wryly, seeming amused for the first time since their lacklustre introduction. "Unless of course, he is speaking of  _you_?"

Harry shrugged unapologetically. "You know  _him_  – he likes to keep anyone close that might be useful to him in the future. Just in my case, he knows  _exactly_ how useful. He wants me to take his classes for him at some point, you see."

Perhaps Riddle  _hadn't_ known this. The man's eyes suddently gained a steely glint, like a flash-frozen ocean, overpowering their previous carefully cultured apathy. He couldn't be sure why the wizard had such a strong response to the fact Harry was probably going to be Hogwarts' Potions Professor one day. Perhaps it was a position Riddle had coveted himself... but no, it couldn't be – Slughorn had  _asked_ Riddle to be his apprentice, hadn't he, but was turned down?

Testing the waters, Harry blithely commented, "Seeing as he couldn't get  _you_ , he decided I was a decent enough  _second choice_ – apparently something he's keen I don't forget." Or, rather, something the Potions Master was keen  _Riddle_ didn't forget.

Something in the other man's posture lifted slightly, though his eyes remained frigidly unamused. "Slughorn did offer me the position, yes... however, I was forced to turn him down. Potions have never been interesting enough to hold my attention," Riddle announced coolly, condemningly.

So... not the potion's position Riddle wanted... but perhaps to live and work at Hogwarts? That made some sense, Harry guessed, given Diary Tom's description of the school as his first and only home; the Riddle of the present must feel the exact same way and would've been reluctant to leave the castle behind when he graduated.

Harry's very existence was an affront to him and his unrealised desires. Great – he was baiting a Dark Lord just by breathing... not like it was the first time.

Trying to rescue whatever safe conversation the two might harbour between them – why was he even bothering? He supposed it was better not to be on bad terms with future-Voldemort from the off – Harry found himself asking, "What did you decide to do, in the end? The Ministry, perhaps?"

Surely just thinking of the power he could get from a quick rise through the Ministry's army of parchment-pushers would've got Riddle all in a tizzy?

   No, though.

Riddle laughed outright at that suggestion, his whole face lighting up and disquieting aura shed. "That bunch of inbred, corrupt fools?  _I think not_ _!_ No, I'm a clerk," he declared boldly, as if daring Harry to say something disparaging about his chosen profession.

If that was what Riddle expected from all associated with the pureblood nobility, he was to be sorely disappointed with Harry.

Harry just raised his eyebrows in surprise and wondered, "Really? I would have thought somebody so talented would get bored in such a slow industry."

The Dark Lord, a shop boy? That  _couldn't_ be right. 

If it was, then... well, Dumbledore wore tutus on his days off, Grindelwald was a poor, misunderstood soul and Harry himself was a budding Necromancer, just waiting for his shot to take over the world with his hordes of undead hands.

   A shop boy, indeed.

Riddle smirked slightly, as if he knew what Harry was thinking, but it seemed stiff on his lips. "There are certain, shall we say,  _challenges_ , associated with my work. Just enough, for now, to stop me from..."

He let the last trail of and Harry picked it up with a genuine snort, suggesting a daring end of: "Going stir crazy and murdering everyone who so much as  _looks_ through the shop window?"

"Quite," Riddle agreed with a small curve to his lips.

From then on, it was all plain sailing.

It crept up from behind like the most insidious magic, but before Harry could even notice in order to be disgusted with himself, Riddle was drawing laugh after laugh from him, proving himself to be an excellent conversationalist. When he finally  _did_ notice the net closing in around him, he was appalled to realise he really was  _enjoying himself_. It was actually interesting to discuss the life of a Hogwarts' student with the future-Dark Lord, who, despite his obvious nature of personal reticence, spoke in a way available only to someone who has true passion for the given subject. From his manner, it was perfectly clear Riddle wished his school days weren't over; especially so when the other wizard noted the retirement of Professor Merryweather at the end of the previous school year.

"I applied for the Defence and the Academic Dark Arts position right away, naturally, but Headmaster Dipped felt I am not yet worldly enough to take up the position at the current time. I had hoped my HOWL scores would speak for themselves, in that particular subject if not in  _Physical_ Defence – but apparently, he feels the position is more than mere academia."

Harry frowned, knowing Dippet hadn't filled the DADA vacancy yet – and honestly, was that position  _ever_ not open? – and considering how odd it was the man turned Riddle away. Perhaps, if he had been given a teaching career then Lord Voldemort wouldn't ever have become a name wizards instinctively feared to speak. If Tom Riddle got a post at Hogwarts, it could've turned the future dramatically away from that awful place where countless families were torn apart by a war borne on racism and the desperate bid for power; it could've been a place where, instead, every student passing through Hogwarts came out with an exceptional understanding of how to protect themselves and the guts to do it in the face of adversity.

"How interesting," Harry replied, curious as to the real reason Riddle's application was rejected. "But Dippet's been moaning he hasn't had any application from anyone with the right qualifications to teach the subject. From what I've gathered, most the people who could've taught Defence were too involved in the war... Lots of them are still recovering, rebuilding their lives... A lot of them died on the front lines."

Riddle appeared surprised to hear this. The man took a sip of his cocktail, grimacing slightly at its sickeningly sweet flavour.

"Really?" he asked lightly. "I was unaware so many Islen magicals were involved in the conflict."

"Quite a few. It's bad luck for Dippet that those most outstanding in the area can't see great injustice and just let it be." Harry grinned widely, thinking largely of himself as he continued, "No, they seem to feel the need to poke it with a big stick, to save as many as possible. The few Masters of Defence that live in the Isles  _do_ have connexions to the Continent – probably how so many of them got drawn into it."

Riddle nodded and fell silent as he processed this information.

"Was Defence your best subject then, Mister Riddle?"

"One of my preferred subjects, certainly, but I truly excelled in Arithmancy, the Academic Dark Arts and – of all things – Divination."

There was a mental image nobody wanted – Voldemort in Trelawney's shawls and jewels. Though, he did have the 'You will  _die_ , Harry Potter!' bit down pat.

"An Artificer then? And a dark one, too, I suppose?" Harry asked, to dislodge the not-pretty picture of Volawney his mind had mocked up.

Riddle's muscles tightened at the question. A hint of rime rose on the air around them.

Slowly, eyes and words frosty, the other wizard ground out, "I'm sure I don't understand your meaning, Potter."

Harry immediately realised he made some kind of blunder and said something that offended Riddle but, as foolhardy as any Gryffindor on their best day, didn't bother backtracking. Instead, feeling like a dictionary, he clarified, "An Artificer – skilled in subtle arts and best with stuff that needs lots of finesse over raw, brute force."

"Yes, I know what an Artificer is, thank you very much," Riddle snapped. For a moment, Harry was forcibly reminded of Aunt Petunia being told Uruguay wasn't, in fact, in Africa at all, and that she obviously must've made a mistake. "I was trying to make sense of your reasoning behind suggesting I am Dark... and in such a public setting. Excelling in theory certainly doesn't make one a practitioner."

Harry did a stealthy sweep of the room, seeing clearly nobody was paying them the slightest mind. Somehow, during the course of their conversation, he and Riddle had slipped themselves into an unnoticed alcove on the opposite side of the room to the buffet. Most people still here were chatting and mingling, or utilising a space cleared for dancing – several couples span around drunkenly. It wasn't likely that, even if there  _were_ something wrong with it, anybody but Riddle heard what he asked.

" _I'll have you know_ , I have not displayed any unsavoury tendencies in my life!"

Riddle sounded fucking outraged. Too much so. Harry knew full well this was the man finished of Myrtle when he was just sixteen – probably because she was such a whiner – and would slaughter hundreds in rising to power as a  _Dark_ Lord, but his question had punched a dent in Riddle's air of calm aloofness and smooth personability. Apparently, even on first meeting, Harry had the ability to rile up Voldemort like no one else could.

Moving to put a placating hand on Riddle's forearm, Harry stilled and thought better of it. 

As gently as he could, like a serpent-charmer, he corrected, "I wasn't trying to suggest anything nefarious. I only meant your magical leaning. Not everyone in the world was born was Light magic, you know?"

But Riddle hardly seemed comforted by Harry's explanation; he looked like he thought Harry was trying to compromise him in some way. This lead to a tense silence only backtracking onto less damning subjects might be able to ease. The road was narrow, littered with the barbed wire and the detritus of unwieldy topics, but he successfully managed to navigate them back onto Riddle's current job, stumbling only briefly – Harry was unlucky enough to have had years of experience in small talk.

"It's merely a temporary position, you understand," his conversation partner was saying half an hour later, probably not having forgotten Harry's insinuation but having temporarily put it aside. Slytherin's did like to bide their time. "Quite naturally, I was offered several different places within our government but none of them appealed to my sensibilities. I plan on further study before committing myself to a career."

Riddle's solipsistic nature meant steering the conversation back to the man's future work plans was relatively simple, if tiresome. The future-Dark Lord described his many interests – and inability to chose between them – with relish. The work at Borgin and Burkes couldn't be making Riddle sackfuls of galleons but having been raised in an orphanage tended to instil a more ascetic approach to life than most had. No doubt the other man was getting by pretty well, if his clothes were anything to go by.

The more Harry listened, interjecting only every now and then, it became painfully clear Voldemort had  _never_ been a clement man, not even in his youth. This didn't really concern Harry; he was so comfortable in Riddle's presence – as if they were childhood friends who hadn't met up in decades – that he commented on the other man's life without hesitation, making suggestions about paths that could be taken.

"And what do you think about Unspeakable work?" Harry asked, wondering why he was letting his mouth get ahead of him like he was still a teenager.

The Department of Mysteries had information on some of the most dangerous magics – magic it would be better Voldemort never got his power-hungry hands on. It was just difficult to fully connect this man before him, Riddle, with the red-eyed, parasitic creature he encountered possessing Quirrel when he was a kid.

Thinking  _in for a knut, in for the lot,_ Harry said, "They're part of the Ministry, obviously, but autonomous. They only really share a building." He paused thoughtfully for a moment before adding, "You'd fit in a the Mews, too, I guess. What're your bloodtraits?"

Riddle frowned heavily, making a show of deciding whether or not to answer.

To be fair, that question was pretty rude, even if the reason behind it was real enough. The future-Dark Lord was a Slytherin to his core and clever, knowledgeable in many subjects, which would make him perfectly suited to the secluded, experimental work of an Unspeakable. Harry knew the department liked to take them young – and impressionable – when as few people as possible were close to them... because when you lived life underground, shrouded in secrets and loyalty oaths, you weren't afforded much in the way of a social life. The DoM's predilections had left many promising muggleborns absent from society, their disappearances going largely unnoticed – and their discoveries unaccredited.

Seeming to come to a conclusion, Riddle replied, "Illusion-weaving, rune-smithing, among others."

Harry nodded, hardly caring the Heir of Slytherin failed to mention being a parselmouth. The DoM would be all over Riddle like dragonpox, given half the chance. If the other man took a post at the mews, though, perhaps the future could be shaped into something less horrific and bloody than what Harry was born to.

While Harry pondered this, Riddle spoke again, "I'm familiar with the Department of Mysteries – though they're unlikely to hire someone like me – but I have not heard of 'the Mews'. What is it?"

   Therein laid the rub.

The Mews was just a small group of experimental wizards the Potters hired to work on Harry's stuck-in-the-past predicament. At least, that was how it started... Under the parent company Rediscover™, within two years the Magical Experimentation Workshops had eight people in their employ, all bound by his father's Infallible Vow to never reveal certain aspects of their work to anyone not already in the know. Tom Riddle would be one hell of an addition to the team at the Mews but... well, he probably wouldn't fancy working somewhere requiring such tight oaths – Slytherins were slippery creatures who preferred more wiggle-room than a Mews contract gave.

"Magical experimentation and research, similar to the DoM but independent."

Riddle  _mmmd_ thoughtfully at the back of his throat, giving no indication which suggestion he liked the sound of better. The man's eyes stayed locked on Harry's own and all of a sudden he fought the urge to fidget or look away under the pressure of that stare. Riddle wasn't trying legilimency, far as he could tell – if he was, he would've shown some sign of the horrors that came with entering Harry Potter's mind – but the weight of his full attention was crushing. Then without warning, the stare broke and the other man turned to look out onto the Slughorn's dwindling guests; if Riddle learned something from Harry's expression, what wasn't obvious.

Countenance relaxed, the one-day Dark Lord leaned back against the wall, appearing a carved cynosure in the alcove – one more effortlessly elegant than the richest aspiring to the Thirteen could ever be. It was in this moment, watching Riddle half-bathed in shadow while artlessly sipping one of the Potions Master's sugary concoctions, Harry realised he might already be in too deep. No wonder this guy found such a following even among the upper-echelons when he could ensnare with a single, unchoreographed conversation. It was so easy to forget this man had the potential to go on to kill hundreds – Harry's birth-parents included – and gast a gloom of fear an persecution across the Isles.

Perfectly coiffed and composed, now-Riddle probably had no idea how torn Harry was: a war between his too-forgiving heart and unreasonably-condemning head. Harry knew to be wary of Tom Riddle's charisma, especially with how the Diary admitted –  _boasted_ – he'd always possessed the ability to charm whoever he needed. Right now, though, even with the knowledge this man had already killed, Harry thought giving him avenues to success that didn't involve slaughtering the masses for a good time was a decent idea. It could only make the future better.

For now, Harry didn't have time to think about how to stop Riddle going psychopathic maniac on the Wizarding World – Slughorn was incoming. The large professor buzzed over to them with a drink in one hand and a glazed pastry in the other.

"Enjoying yourselves, boys?"

Turning his head to face the man, who was pink and sweaty enough he may have run a marathon between now and the last they spoke, Harry practically grinned, humming with pleasure. "Quite, sir."

"Certainly, Horace," Riddle gently said at the same time, his own smile thinner but pleased enough. "It has grown ever later, however, and it was already late when I arrived."

"Ah, there's no harm in a little sleep sacrificed in favour of social life every once in a while, Tom," Slughorn insisted. "I daresay you work yourself far too hard, between the antiques and your continued studies. Relax, dear boy! A night off shan't end the world."

Privately, Harry thought Riddle taking some time off might be  _good_ for it, actually. Not that the guy seemed like he was about to start a revolution, or anything; for now, he seemed relatively content to skirt along the border of societies rules, more than violently giving people what for. Myrtle, though... Harry mustn't forget Myrtle.

"Still, I am afraid I really must be going. As it is, I doubt I will have time to sleep before I am required to make my first meeting of the day. It would be best not to hamper myself any further – business merits wits."

The Potions Master chortled. "You could keep awake for a week and still have your wits, Tom, but I nonetheless understand. I was already thinking of clearing out the stragglers myself– Oh, no! Not the two of  _you_ of course Riddle, Hadrian–" Slughorn hastened to clarify "–you are always quite welcome... but rather those who have had rather a little too much of the punch and fallen asleep in foolish places. Happens every time!"

"I think Catherine Stephenson's behind those drapes over there," Harry chimed drolly, pointing in the witch's general direction.

Slughorn made a minor sound of disapproval. "I shall have to owl her father... really, Catherine ought to know better... Oh, I say – I have some Bjartoy's Bryht Eye if you require it, Tom? No need to go on the job three spells past your best, am I right?"

Riddle thanked the Potions Master for his, quote, 'kind consideration' and accepted the offer. Slughorn went off in the direction of his private office where, Harry supposed, he would be retrieving Tom's pick-me-up potion and penning a very angrily worded letter to Lord Stephenson for failing to keep his daughter on a leash. 

"I hardly think Stephenson will thank you for that," the other man observed drily, returning his attention to Harry as he reached the bottom of his drink. "Dogging in those who think you friends for Slug-points... how very Slytherin."

"Hufflepuff, actually," he returned, then at Riddle's raised eyebrow, added, "according to that horrendous Hat of yours – rude thing, isn't it? But no... Stephenson deserves all she gets. Girl needs to get a hold of herself before she winds up in a gutter somewhere."

Not that Harry really cared, further than that the Stephensons were vassals to his family... not very good ones, by all accounts. Reputation was no odds to him, to his father's and Jameson's disgust.

"Hufflepuff... I'm not certain I believe that," Riddle murmured, before tutting at a jug which had automatically come to pour him a refill. "I will await your correspondence on the Department of Mysteries, if you are, in fact, able to put me in touch via your contact. You have given me much to think on."

The man's tone brooked no repeal – almost an order; guess that was the future-Dark Lord bit showing. Still, Harry was more than willing to do this, if only for the chance to alter Riddle's timeline enough to push him down a different, marginally less psychotic path. The guy was clearly brilliant – pushing genius levels – and not especially unstable at this point. No, rather, he was cool, calculating, merciless by definition and had the drive to achieve his goals... the past-to-come attested to that.

Did some great cataclysm – or ritual – Riddle went through in the future undo him? It must have, given how different he was right now to how he would one day be. Fifty years and and some fracturing of mind... The problem with people who's minds embodied art and logic entwined was that it didn't take much to punch them off the precipice. Harry once overheard a documentary at the Dursleys, which said the brain's artistic centres were twisted with things that could drive a man insane if you cut the wrong rope (here, Vernon had accusingly shot a twelve-year-old Harry a nasty, gleeful glare). Point was, creativity and lunacy were close kin.

By the time Riddle pushed off the wall and departed with his Bryht Eye, Harry was more than ready to fall into bed. Much to think on, indeed...

Hogwarts kindly helped him back up to the basement, where his quarters were located. As he shucked formal robes into a messy pile and took off his glasses, a brief whisper of his wand lit the thick, cream candle on his nightstand. The lyrics upon its stem were unreadable, cast into shadow by the flame above them... but Harry didn't need to see them to know what it said:

 _To alien lands devoutly clinging,_  
_To age-old rites of fertile earth,_  
_I let a captured bird go winging  
_ _To greet the radiant spring's rebirth._

He slipped into bed.

His following words had an air of habit, completing the unwritten half of the verse: "My heart grew lighter then – why mutter against Perun's providence, and rage, when I was free to set aflutter but one poor captive from his cage..."

Harry sighed heavily.

Despite that this was the sort-of-past, the perhaps-future hadn't happened yet. It could be  _better_ than the one he came from... He would ensure it.

  because... maybe that was why he was here?

 

 

 

 


	13. Chapter 13

_posted: 2018-09-23_  
_edits: none as yet_

  

  

 

 

_HORROR IN THE HALLS OF HOGWARTS_  
      _Perpetrator Responsible Brought to Justice_

  

_For several disquieting months, it has seemed that Hogwarts_  
_School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, beating heart of the Wiza-_  
_rding Isles, was doomed to close._  
_When innocent students at the school first began sho-_  
_wing up in hallways, frozen solid as if crystal statues, initially_  
_the best healers of St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Ills and M-_  
_aladies was contacted; the healers immediately determined_  
_the cause of the students' suffering was some sort of petrifica-_  
_tion, though whether induced by potion, artefact, or a new, ter-_  
_rifying form of magical disease, even the most learned healers_  
_could not discern. For months, many parents have lived in fear_  
_that their child may be the next to succumb to this awful fate,_  
_unsure of what caused it or if any cure could actually be found._  
_Today the sunrise heralds bear news to us, worried ci-_  
_vilians, both of good and ill._  
_Late yesterday evening, both the staff at St Mungo's_  
_and the Auror Department were called to Hogwarts by the He-_  
_admaster; unfortunately, the potential-disease, which has pre-_  
_viously solidified its victims, had finally shown itself to be fatal._  
_A student, whose name has not yet been disclosed out of res-_  
_pect for her family, was found deceased in the first floor girls'_  
_lavatory. Her body was found at around seven in the evening_  
_by a fifth-year male prefect who had been completing his pre-_  
_curfew rounds, as all prefects' duties entail so as to ensure the_  
_safety of their fellow students. Finding one of his fellow stude-_  
_nts deceased was no doubt a traumatic experience this prefect_  
_shall never forget._  
_In the midst of this trauma and tragedy, this same pre-_  
_fect (who has requested we not reveal his identity at this time)_  
_went on to not simply successfully intuit how his fellow student_  
_had been killed, but to catch the killer himself!_  
_That is correct, ladies and gentleman! This poor, distr-_  
_aught prefect, an all-O grade student and who felt he had fail-_  
_ed in his duties by allowing such a tragedy to occur to one of_  
_his classmates, immediately set to working through all the new_  
_information his discovery of his fellow student's body had given_  
_him and deduce precisely how she had been murdered. Later_  
_that evening, the prefect in question confronted the younger_  
_student he knew was responsible for the crime, subsequently_  
_capturing him and handing him over to Magical Law Enforcem-_  
_ent._  
_The perpetrator of this unconscionable crime, now in_  
_custody, is a young wizard, not yet graduated from Hogwarts;_  
_his wand was snapped upo—_

 

 

      —Daily Prophet, May 3 1943  
      current affairs reporter: Rea Wells

 

 

 

 _july_  
the ghost and the giant

   
 

 **"HAVE YOU HAD A GOOD look at this?" Carina demanded sourly, flopping her folded _Prophet_ down on the table between them.  **A photo of Albus Dumbledore surrounded by a swarm of his buff-robed party members was on the front beside a headline reading:  _NEW POWERS FOR MINISTRY ENFORCERS._

"It's simply awful," she continued when he did not immediately respond, glaring down at her paper in outrage. "If someone won't do something soon, the Whigs will have every werewolf in the country rounded up, tagged with a trace. Is nothing sacred anymore? If it wasn't bad enough when they set up Cross-LDN, now people can't even eat breakfast without the Ministry asking what they had?"

Sitting across from her, Tom buttered a crumpet and  _hmmm_ ed.

"They even say with what happened to the Lindendells – may magic have mercy on their souls – it's clear all dark creatures need monitoring. As if this is the fault of  _all_ werewolves. I mean, sometimes wizards kill people – just look at Grindelwald – but we're hardly foolish enough to claim we should all be followed around and only allowed to live in certain areas, do we?"

"Yes, but werewolves are also more dangerous," Tom pointed out, biting into his breakfast.

Carina frowned frustratedly. "In what way? I know a spell that can tear all the muscles from your bones... And just look at the Killing Curse – that one's instant death. How are wizards any less dangerous than werewolves?"

Tom conceded this point to her.

Although he, just as the Ministry, thought werewolves were dangerous, it was impossible to deny they were only particularly so one night each month and that wizards were certainly no less deadly given the right inclination. What happened to the Lindendells was certainly tragic, as the death of all magicals, but the government need not act as if the entire House was dead or start writing new, increasingly controlling laws because of it. That was a slippery slope.

"It's a slippery slope," Carina stated an instant later, perfectly echoing his thoughts. "It's no far stretch from monitoring werewolves to controlling centaur populations and telling merfolk which lakes they can live in. And why stop there? How long before they insist on monitoring every spell we cast? They already do that in Muggle London."

She put down her own crumpet hard, splattering the tablecloth with drips of molten butter. "I, for one, cannot understand why the Whigs are getting away with this. It's as if... well, one man manages to put pay to Grindelwald in the nick of time and suddenly, all the rest of us ought to bow down to him? How can he go overruling the treaties Europe's upheld since the unification of the Thirteen?"

He wanted to say it probably had a lot to do with the fact Grindelwald had terrified the government; as a result, they had laden Dumbledore with accolades aplenty since the end of the war. He also considered mentioning how little he trusted their old professor, finding the man more evasive than the best Slytherin and, considering his new political aspirations, more driven than the most demented Hufflepuff. In addition, Tom still found himself unable to fully recall what happened in the lift that God-awful day at the Ministry, though he  _had_ found a bloody Ace of Spades from a novelty pack of cards tucked into his sock... (Was it somehow significant?)

These things did not really need to be said, however, because Carina was already well aware of the reasons for Dumbledore's sudden rise to power, even if she could not agree with them.

"Nobody wants to go up Grindelwald's glorious defeater, right now. Why do you think the Whigs appointed him to their top spot?"

"I know, I know. I just can't help but think... what if the old Lord Potter managed to finish Grindelwald off? He was Whig too, yes, but far less biased than Dumbledore."

"He would have been a much preferable leader for the Whigs, it's true." Tom smirked suddenly, adding, "It is regretful they don't allow dead men to take the helm. A real shame, as I heard the late Lord Potter was pushing for action earlier in the war – if he had his way, we would have taken out Grindelwald's strongholds long before he breached the Isles."

Brushing butterfly off the pot and serving herself another cup of tea, Carina nodded. "That's true... For a Whig, Cousin Jameson was delightfully moderate. I'm sure Lord Sirius had a pact with him – they took different benches to have a foot in both camps. The Blacks have a long-standing alliance with the Potters."

"Indeed?" Tom asked in interest, one eyebrow raising.

"They were at Hogwarts together and you know how that goes... and, if you go back far enough on our tapestry, you find both our families came over from France together – during the revolution there, of course." She shrugged carelessly. "I guess none of them felt like losing their heads over being rich. It's not as if impoverished muggles were  _our_ problem – we're not even the same species."

It was very rare for a true outsider to get an inside glimpse into the workings of the Thirteen. Though bigoted in the way only a true purebred aristocrat could be, Carina remained a kind witch; she was misguided in her beliefs rather than cruel. Tom supposed being raised a Black was enough to give anyone a bit of a superiority complex. Although, in all fairness, Carina  _was_ superior to ninety-nine percent of those he had met his entire life... the wizards included.

"You say Lord Black and the late Lord Potter were close?"

"Close enough. They did go out their way to renew the alliance by marrying Cousin Castora to the current Lord Potter. The Lord Potter's brother, at the time."

"Was that recently?" Tom asked, latching onto the chance of finding something out about the enigmatic Potters.

To tell the truth, it was remarkably difficult to find information on Heir Potter. Tom wished to know more of the man he spent a good portion of Slughorn's party speaking with. Potter had been intriguing, to say the least. An odd little contradiction: Awkwardly closed-off in some ways but friendly and open to questionable subjects, clearly powerful but self-conscious... and  _he_ had seemed interested in  _Tom_ , too. But... there was something _off_ about the man; it could just be his magic struggling to settle through the stress of recent war, or something altogether more _sinister_...

So caught was he on thoughts of the man he met at Slughorn's soiree, he almost missed Carina's reply.

"Oh no. Decades ago, actually," she was saying. "They have two children, too – a little girl and a grown-up son."

Tom nodded, focusing on the subject now he had managed to breach it. "What do you know of them?"

Carina shrugged elegantly, sipping her tea. "Not that much, really. My branch of the family's not really close with them. Alphie's their son's godfather, I think – just tradition... the eldest cousin as your eldest child's godfather. I'd not realised he  _was_ Cousin Hadrian's godfather until a few years ago. I mean, there's only six years between them – I wasn't even alive when the ceremony was conducted."

"That's a little... illogical. Why select a godfather for your child who is only  _six years_ older than they are?" Tom wondered, nonplussed. "It seems to defeat the point."

"Tradition, as I said."

"All the same, it seems counterproductive to me."

Carina smiled over the rim of her cup. "I know, it  _does_ seem silly – it's to keep the family together. Take Castora's children, for example... Their first loyalty is to the Potters but, with a Black mother and godfather, their second loyalty will always be to the Blacks. The practice is mostly a way of making sure firstborns from married-out daughters of our family are properly tied to the Family Magics."

"Well, I can never pretend to  _understand_ the insanity of purebloods but, I suppose, it makes some sense. Why don't you know the Potters well, then, if your brother is tied to them?"

Flipping through her previously-abandoned  _Prophet_ , Carina shrugged again. "Wally and I are a fair bit younger than Alphie. The Potters haven't even been living in the Isles for the most part – the Hollow's destroyed... and even before that, Castora preferred the old French manse. I'm not entirely sure Cousin Hadrian was  _born_ here, come to think of it... The daughter was – that was just a couple of years back."

Tom nodded, hoping his friend would have more to say on the subject. As it was, she seemed not to. Instead, she prodded one of the classifieds curiously and asked him what 'Ooh-neh-show' was and why the magical private sector was interested in having wizards apply for a position on some muggle committee being formed.

 

 

 

 **"Charlus Potter, you mean?" Madam Smith asked Tom breathlessly several hours later.** "Oh, that boy was a right little jarvey at school. A full five years below me but, by the ancient gods, did he cause havoc during my OWL year!"

"Am I to surmise he was a troublemaker?" Tom queried with faux-disinterest, unfolding the parchment on which he had listed Mr Borgin's offers for various artefacts in Smith's possession.

The woman laughed, the sound not unlike an angry niffler protesting a bath. "He was a menace. The quintessential Gryffindor – charismatic, loved by all despite the trouble he was, more often than not, causing." The witch brushed down her pink robes distractedly. "I came to know his elder brother quite well, after Hogwarts. I was friends with his wife, you see – a terrible thing, what happened to her... she would have been better off killed outright – she used to make the pastries for Donatella's."

"That's the bakery in Vertic, is it not?"

"Yes, wonderful place! I happen to be friends with the owner – Hokey collects a basket from him every Thursday. Perhaps I could make the pick-up early this week, though, if you could stay for tea?"

Having no excuses not to – given it was a Tuesday and he had no further appointments other than returning to Borgin and Burkes – Tom was unable to refuse such a 'generous' offer. At least he may receive information for his troubles.

"Wonderful, Mister Riddle, just wonderful! You have never tasted anything quite like Donatella's cream cakes, I can promise you that. Not quite the beauties they were when Marcia made them, of course, but exceedingly delightful delicacies nonetheless."

"Marcia?"

"Oh yes, what was I saying...?"

The two of them turned a corner into the villa's reading rooms, which were lit by bright sunlight despite the overcast nature of the day beyond Smith's estate.

"Ah yes, I recall... Well, I became good friends with Marcia Potter over the years. Why, she was the one who helped me acquire the Last Day of Babel, you know? It was painted by her grandmother, you see – it was rather hard to persuade her to part with it but, and it is no secret, friends always come through for you in the end."

The woman looked up at him with a revolting expression somewhere between lust and arrogance. "She knew, in the end, I was the best person to care for it." Smith waved a fat hand around at her undeserved treasure horde demonstratively. "After all, magical art should remain with magical art, should it not?"

What Smith meant, Tom surmised, was that all magical art should remain with  _her_ , leaving nobody else the chance to possess any. He did not agree with this in the slightest but still outwardly made an affirmative noise, wanting to stay on the liver-speckled spinster's good side for the time being.

"The Potters took my best copy of  _Hohenlohe_ in exchange for the painting, naturally. All things considered, it was well worth it."

"Indeed," Tom murmured. "Now, my lady," he directed at the woman with a saccharine smile, "Mister Borgin had interest in several of the more unusual books you have here. Perhaps, you could bear to part with one or two of them?" His smile dropped into a forced, heated sort of stare. "I understand your reluctance entirely – surely your treasures wish not to be parted from  _you_  – but, I'm afraid, it is my job to enquire anyway. Such is the nature of duty."

Madam Smith's sickly expression had not faded – Tom briefly speculated she may be having a stroke.

"Such a shame," she simpered, "to have a clever young man such as you stuck working for a grouch like Davidos. His assistants rarely last long, I am sure you are aware? I suppose they cannot stand him any more than I can."

On this, she was probably right. Even  _Tom_  – who was graced with much patience through a hard childhood and years of belittlement as the only 'mudblood' in Slytherin – wanted to murder the man and damn the consequences. It was somewhat surprising Borgin's previous 'clerk's had not done so, though Tom heard one or two people came close to burning the shop down – allegedly with Borgin still inside. It would be hard to blame any man who lost their self-control where Borgin was concerned; there was nothing charming or soft about his employer, who would poison his own mother if it meant getting his hangnails on something rare or valuable. 

"I  _am_ particularly tenacious," Tom allowed, "and one has to work for a living in this world. Gold does not simply pour down Gringotts' front steps."

"Then I should have you come work  _here_ , Mister Riddle," Smith declared, dirt-brown eyes bright with greed. "I am not as young as I used to be and poor Hokey is as advanced as I. You could live in the manor and catalogue all my treasures... Perhaps, you could even put your talents to use acquiring a few more," she added thoughtfully. "Many would bend over backwards to accommodate you, I imagine."

It went unsaid that the woman herself was currently doing so.

Though Smith's offer was appealing in the sense it would be a joy to spend his days surrounded by an unprecedented number of magical artefacts, exploring a library which rivalled the Blacks' for size, there was no chance of him agreeing to work here. It was bad enough Tom had now been forced to visit the dumpy witch a second time – actually  _living_ with her was out of the question. If he  _did_ remain in the same building as Smith for an extended period, he actually feared for his virtue – and his criminal record, for that matter.

"So generous of you, my lady, but I'm afraid I am rather set on another path. If I am fortunate, very soon I will be leaving Mister Borgin behind in favour of starrier climbs."

Looking equal parts hopeful and stricken, the witch crooned, "I  _do_ hope you will still visit this old lady even once you are free of Davidos' dour?"

Feeling quite ill, Tom offered up his most genteel, reässuring smile and murmured, "Of course – it would be my pleasure..."

 

 

 

 **Thursday evening, more than a week since Slughorn's soiree, Tom unearthed a stack of various publications he had from the past year from behind the half-completed oil painting (of Hogwarts' tumbledown coach house) leaned up against them.** There was little information in them about the Potter family, besides a notice that with the death of Jameson Potter, his younger brother Charlus was now Head of the Third of the Thirteen. The article announcing this also mentioned the deceased Lord Potter had one son, Darien, but that the man out-survived him by several years.

Flicking through the society section, he eventually came across a small piece detailing Charlus Potter's main position as a foreign emissary with the Le Ministère des affaires magiques de la France. As far as Tom could tell, Lord Potter was long-standing in that position; the man's duty was to help maintain France's magical colonies overseas and attend meetings with various magical governments in lieu of the French Minister. Although it did not seem the sort of position one would expect for a man once seen as a troublemaker, he must be successful in his position or he would no longer hold it.

Castora Dorea Potter, the current Lord's wife, did not work. There was mention of a daughter having been born to the Potters in nineteen forty-one but, besides that, very little information besides the sort of high-society gossip in which one should put little stock. Most the recent information he could find on Lady Potter was in relation to trends she set in fashion (it would seem she very much favoured voilet) and which restaurants she favoured when in the Isles (mainly the French ones).

On Heir Potter, the man Tom so very much needed to know more of, there was practically nothing. An article from November previous mentioned him only as the current Lord Potter's son and detailed his release from Nurmenguard after being held there as a prisoner of war for fifteen months. The piece failed to inform _where_ Hadrian Potter recuperated from his stay at Grindelwald's pleasure, only that he had returned to his family and was not available for comment.

There was a strong possibility international newspapers would be of more aid to in this. Potter's wartime position in the Russian Guard suggested he had little importance to the Wizarding Isles, as had Carina's few words about her cousin at breakfast on Tuesday.

The man he had met at Hogwarts was equal parts reserved and audacious, smartly dressed – as all those privy to remain in the upper echelons of magical society were – but not appearing to cater to the extracting level of manners Tom had come to associate with such circles. Potter had not been rude to him; no – the man was polite enough. Heir Potter's oddity was in the way he seemed willing to broach subjects other purebloods would skirt, while making Tom several offers one would not usually make another they had only just been introduced to. It was possible Heir Potter, whether he had a fair feel for the power of others or not, immediately took a liking to Tom based on the fact they each had unimaginably similar magic; though this seemed unlikely, as Tom had always been careful to keep it bridled against his skin so as to avoid unreasonable suspicion from the mainly light-oriented faculty, which caused the students of many dark families suffering during their time at the school.

Learning about the Magical Experimentation Workships (better known as the Mews) proved simpler than finding it on the man who mentioned it. Admittedly, Tom was mildly intrigued by the company the Potter's owned and surprised he had never heard of it; it seemed a small operation but one with the potential to become important to the future of magical advancement.

Tom discovered the Mews came into being only five years ago, formed by the late Lord Potter, and existed purely to give forward-thinking magicals chance to experiment in relative safety. The company kept a building not far from his flat, where its few employees conducted research into everything from luck potions to sentient transfiguration to near-alchemical charms. Even with only eight staff, the Mews had already churned out several useful healthcare potions (one of which concocted by the man on interest, Hadrian Potter himself) and, more recently, crafted a mind probing spell intended to help reconnect memories in those suffering from severe mental trauma and subsequent disparity (he assumed disparity was a euphemism for insanity).

There were ads in the papers for several products the Mews already manufactured and, in small text at the bottom of an advertisement for Putney Logic Sticks novelty items, Tom discovered that PLS were actually a subsidiary of the Magical Experimentation Workshops.

Even  _Tom_ knew of PLS, though he had previously disregarded them as unimportant. They made memory aids intended to enhance first-person learning and retention during revision both -- popular with HOWL students. The same company also sold more questionable wares, such as puzzles meant to improve the way one dealt with problems, jewellery to increase mental clarity, and enchanted objects that inhibited the bearer's urge to procrastinate. At no point had he owned any of Putney Logic Sticks' products – not needing them, for starters, and in addition having assumed them worthless tat – but knew classmates had claimed benefit from the company's products.

Certainly, nothing the Mews released since its formation seemed worthless; that Putney Logic Sticks items were produced by them, in a roundabout way, actually boded well for their usefulness. The Organ Rejuvenation Draught itself was an impressive brew, especially considering it was reputed to work on muggles (something of which very few potions were capable).

To his disgust, however, the Mews also turned out to be the parent-company of Thoroughfare, the up-and-coming giant in the ward-setting business. Thoroughfare were the ones responsible for the thrice-damned Cross-London Detection Network, used to record all spells performed by wizards whilst in the muggle side of the capital; Thoroughfare were the ones the people of Kingswood would hire, should they ever scrape together enough gold to have their enchanted forest made fit for rehabitation. 

All in all, Tom thought the work the Mews performed was very intruiging. Indeed, a position at the company would be highly desirable, considering they seemed exclusively appeared hire exceptional wizards rather than those monied or pureblooded. Usually, when speaking of businesses run directly by the Thirteen, nepotism was the expected path; it was curious the Potters' company displayed distinctly different values to other pureblood-run businesses. The fact Mews employees seemed to have free reign to experiment in whatever field took their fancy was a bonus.

Except, when one looked closely at the Mews company byline, he saw there were certain oaths associated with working for them – expected, given discoveries belonged in part to the organisation rather than purely the individual making them. Tom would rather not give his genius away.

So... there was some merit to the suggestion he seek a place at the Magical Experimentation Workshops... but, before he would consider offering his services to the company, he needed to know more about the Potter family itself. If the current Lord Potter passed away, Tom would find himself working directly for Hadrian Potter. Ever the Slytherin, Tom was not one to lock himself into a contract or oath with a man who would not be controlled, no matter how promising the position.

    Better to make ones own way than be clapped with unslippable shackles.

He pushed aside his pile of newspapers with a disgruntled sigh. He would have to visit the publication archives in the Black Library, where one could gander at hundreds of years worth of old, international news sources. It would be simple enough – Carina would let him in without question – but time-consuming, with his other duties interfering.

Adding  _search papers in Black Library for mention of Hadrian Potter_ to his mental list of tasks, Tom smirked tiredly to himself, wondering if  _he_ should invest in one of PLS' ant-procrastination charms. Between Smith and Borgin, the continued research regarding soul magic and his sensitivity to death, and helping Carina balance her accounts for her deserter brother, Tom might not even have time to sleep, let alone put together a dossier on Potter. He supposed his current painting would never near completion -- sacrifices had to be made.

 

 

 

**"These are all copies of _the Prophet_ ,  _Witch Weekly_ , your very own  _the Hogwarts Express_ and  _the Howler_ , dating back to each paper's introduction, " Carina said, gesturing to the wide shelves in the room on her left.**

Peering within, Tom dreaded the sheer number of hours it would take to go through everything. Already, it was a gargantuan task when viewing only publications from the  _Isles_  – international publications were kept in a different room. His friend directed him there with a small, amused smile, causing him to narrow his eyes; she was clearly mocking his trepidation over the upcoming task.

"We keep the foreign stuff here.  _Intermagical, La Liberté, das Heute, Vinda, Liniyata_ etcetera – and over here," she continued like a tour-guide, showing him into a third room that was stacked floor to ceiling, wall to wall with hardback journals, "are the premium copies of  _Calculated Quarterly, the Practical Potioneer, Transfiguration Today, Auld Alchemy, the Herbologist's Handguide_ and things like that... What do you need all this for, anyway? I doubt anyone has bothered coming down here in years."

Judging by the slowly accumulating dust and faint flicker of failing charms, Tom surmised she was accurate in her statement.

"I merely need to look back at events in Europe during the last decade," he answered succinctly, not evading her question entirely but not elaborating much on his precise purpose.

"Oh," she responded, sounding disappointed. "I almost hoped you meant to put together a culminate about new laws made since the twenties.  _Someone_ needs to study this stuff and actually fight it. Still, I suppose I could do that while you're down here – keep you company. Can I help with what  _you're_ up to, at all?"

"I was under the impression  _fighting_ these new laws, as you put it, was what your Lord Sirius has been doing?"

"He is... but – and don't tell anyone – my Lord has not been well of late. If he passes, family headship falls first to Arcturus and then Orion, who's not precisely..."

"Loquacious, dedicated, interested in bettering our world..." Tom commented sardonically, ticking off Orion Black's non-existent better traits on the fingers of one hand. It did not take long to run out of 'nice' things to say of the boy.

Carina huffed out a laugh. "All of the above. I'm not sure Cousin Orion can even tie his own shoes without an elf... and Wally's wrapped him around her wand."

Tom aborted a snort. A bright, rarely genuine smile crossing his face. 

"Or," he suggested amusedly, "Walburga is leading him about by  _his_ wand."

"That too," his confident agreed. She tugged on his arm, "Come on, might as well find what you're after."

Reëntering the international publications room, Tom narrowed down his focus until it was bent entirely on the information he needed, rather than the monumental task to come. Immediately, he made a beeline for the shelves labelled  _Intermagical_. The sheaves marked 1930–1946 were ten wide, containing some fifteen hundred editions of the top-shelf magazine; any of them could contain vital articles, offering up clues to the character of Hadrian Potter... but there was no chance he was going through all  _sixteen years_ of issues.

Swiftly calculating how old Potter was and weighing things up, Tom decided realistically the other man could not have been involved in the war prior to 1941, at the earliest; further, he already read Potter's release of Nurmengard occurred just after the end of the war. Tom would start by searching the sheaves '41–'45, slicing the number of issues to be covered by a third.

Having made this decision, he lifted the two heaves labelled '45. Mercifully, they were feather light – Blacks tended not to masochism. He fingered the silk used to bind them together, feeling a flurry of charms and spells woven into the binding, there to lighten the load, keep paper crisp and fresh and prevent yellowing, to stop ink fading and to fight dust, among other things... The protections were impressive, all things considered – more care was taken in the Blacks' archives than Hogwarts' Chief Librarian took in the stacks.

As the sheaves we so lightened, Tom easily piled up the ten he needed and transported the tower over to the table that took up the centre of the room.

"Can you even see over the top of those?" Carina laughed. "What is this?  _Intermagical_ forty-one to forty-five. It would take weeks to go through all those."

Shifting the massive tower of magazines over to see her, Tom agreed, "It will." He smiled coolly, already anticipating all he could learn from the publications. "That's why I have you for company, though, my dear." 

 

 

 

Intermagical, December 16 1943  
war correspondent Donia Dahl

 

_WHITE GUARD TAKE SIGNIFICANT HIT IN SAINT PETERSBURG_

_In the early hours of this morning, spellfire is reported to have broken o-  
ut in the northern art of Saint Petersburg. The battle occurred between the  
White Guard 3rd Cavalry and unknown Visionäire insurgents, with heavy  
losses transpiring on both sides.  
  The city of Saint Petersburg has been under seige for many months; a  
squadron of the 3rd Cavalry were delivering aid supplies to the city's civi-  
lians when they came un_ _der attack. The squadron was, at the time, being  
led by an outside superior officer, who sadly lost his life in battle. Only th-  
ree members of the original squadron survive: Dragoon Private Duska O-  
rlov, Field Usher Astrid Nisaken and Captain Sigrid Dachner. Among the  
deceased are Dragoon Privates Vladimir Perminov, Yakov Brezhnec and  
Alexander Ivenenko, Watch Master Vladislav Dvorsky, Lieutenant Darius  
Guidetti and Second Major Khadrian Charlusovitch._  
_It is not clear precisely how the squadron were so easily ambushed. M-  
urmurings have emerged from within Imperial Russia, suggesting the sq-  
uadron did, indeed, emerge from the initial battle victorious. Some sort of  
destructive curse was then performed by an unknown Visionary, leading  
to the deaths of the remaining members of the squadron and decimating  
White Guard reinforcements who had just arrived on the field. The remai-  
ning members of the squadron survive purely to having been ordered off  
the field of battle to see to their injuries._  
_All the deceased allies are survived by family and will surely be mourned._  
_Tsaress Natal'ya, royal head of the White Guard of Imperial Rus, has so_  
_far been unavailable for comment._

 

 

 

Intermagical, Agust 23 1944  
Parisian correspondent Marcel Latier

 

_FIREBIRD FALLS, QUARTIERS MAGIQUE LIBERATED_

   _Amidst flurried reports suggesting the Muggle Resistant Forces, numer-_  
_ous in their resources, have passed Troam, forcing the Muggle Enemy to_  
_retreat, International Coöperative Law Enforcement Division have brought_  
_freedom to Paris' Visionäire-held quartiers magique. There are scattered_  
_rumours of tanks (a type of metal, horseless carriage muggles take into b-_  
_attle) entering the mundane Paris, with possible fighting between the MRF_  
_and the Muggle Enemy continuing on after the Visionäire's retreat._  
_ICLED, spearheaded by the French Muggleborn Insurgency, the Long H-_  
_untsmen and the White Guard of Imperial Rus, brought the fight to the Vis-_  
_ionäire earlier today, following yesterday's long-awaited sacking of Fort de_  
_Romainville, where the Good Lord's forces and Muggle Enemy alike have_  
_held civilian prionsers in abhorrent disregard. Some of the millions of mun-_  
_dance persons to be corralled during the Muggle Enemy's rampage were_  
_imprisoned in the melancholic place, alongside scores of magicals. (A full_  
_list of those magicals now confirmed deceased by ICELED can be found_  
_on page six. A list of those who have been recovered alive follows at the b-_  
_ottom of page seven.)_  
_Alongside the liberation of the quartiers magique comes the final end to_  
_an elusive dark witch has preyed on ICLED forces and civilians alike. Kno-_  
_wn for successfully infiltrating our allies and assassinating many wizards_  
_vital to the war effort, crossing any and all wards with no apparent trouble_  
_and setting curse-fires across wide swathes of European countryside, the_  
_Firebird is no more._  
_Surely coming as a great blow to Grindelwald's warcraft, the Firebird falls_  
_at the hands of Acting Lieutenant General Hadrian Potter of the White Gua-_  
_rd. The pair fought across the streets of Paris, Potter eventually emerging_  
_from the Firebird's explosive bloodbath (which has wrought heavy destructi-_  
_on on the city) as the victor. This comes just a month after the enormously_  
_vital Battle of Potier's Field, which saw the end of the internationally feared_  
_Gateman Colina and paved way for the liberation of Paris itself._  
  
          for more information of Gateman Colina and his atrocities, page ten  
          for more on the Firebird and her victims, page 12

 

 

 

Intermagical, December 19 1945  
human interest reporter Mal O'Brien

 

_HOME IN TIME FOR YULETIDE_

_I have been following the stories of three separate soldiers from vari-  
ous European nations, all of whom spend time as Prisoners of the War  
in Nurmengard. While two of these men have long returned home to a  
hero's welcome, the third has been denied the quaffle at every pass in  
his attempts to return to Magical France, the location of his ancestral  
home._  
  _Ex-serviceman Lieutenant General Heir Hadrian Potter (of the 3rd Ca-  
valry of the White Guard of Imperial Rus) has been vilified by the Fren-  
ch Ministry of Magic ever since the Liberation of Paris. It is in pursuit of  
the liberation of France's Capital that Heir Potter defeated the Firebird,  
a legendary Visionäire assassin, and saw the release of hundreds of  
French Magicals from Fort de Romainville several d- ays earlier. It is a-  
lso during the city's liberation that Heir Potter was captured by the Visi-  
onäire for a second time, subsequently spending fifteen months in Nur-  
mengard._  
_Today, I am privileged that I will bear witness to Heir Potter's return to  
French soil._  
_Two months after being released from Nurmengard, the French Minist-  
ry of Magic has finally acquiesced to an arrangement allowing Heir Pott-  
er to return to his ancestral home, albeit under house arrest. Heir Potter  
will not be permitted to leave the grounds of Chateau de Potiers and into  
France-proper under any circumstances, according to French officials._  
_For the past months, various high-up figures from ministries across Eu-  
rope have been leaning heavily upon the French, requiring they allow  
French citizen Heir Potter reädmittance to his own home. Though born  
in Kitezh, Russia, and a citizen of the Magical Russias and also holding  
titles in the Magical Isles of Albion and Angland, Heir Potter has held cit-  
izenship in Magical France since his birth to naturalised French citizen  
Lady Castora Potter nee Black._  
_I have been privileged to speak with the Lord and Lady Potter and their  
young daughter, all of whom are overjoyed their son and brother will be  
returning to France._  
_'That a hero of war can be released, only to discover he is not allowed  
by the government to return home, is abhorable,' Lord Potter told me ye-  
sterday, when I caught up with him. 'It is the good sense that the French  
Ministry for whom I have worked as an emissary for many decades, ha-  
ve finally put this ridiculous notion Hadrian is a guerrilla warlord behind  
them.'_  
_'I have already decorated the house ready for Yule,' Lady Potter tells  
me with a beatific smile. 'I want Hadrian to come home to freshly baked  
treats and the wonderful smell of pine he so loved as a child. He's alwa-  
ys loved Yuletide, so the dratted Ministry couldn't have picked a better  
time to let him come home.'_  
_When I asked young Effulgia Potter if she was excited for her brother's  
impending return, she announced, 'I'm so happy! I've already got him a  
big present and everything! I've not seen Harry for ages and ages... Ma-  
mi said he didn't want to not come back... but bad men wouldn't let him  
come home. It's good he's coming back now because he promised he'd  
teach me how to fly!'_  
_Heir Potter himself is to be met at the Nederlands-France border by_ _F-  
rench Aurors later today, where he will then be escorted to his fam_ _ily's  
grounds just outside Poitiers. Though he does not yet know it, I _ _have se-  
en for myself he will be given a most magnificent welcome by _ _his family  
and will surely have a Yuletide to remember. For a man who _ _spend his  
last period of Hecatene celebration in Nurmengard, this ye_ _ar's festivities_  
_at home are sure to be a welcome change._

_  
_

 

 

 

_Liniyata, December 15 1943_  
_obituaries_

  Born on August 3rd 1925, in Imperial Rus, Khadrian Charlusovitch spend many of his early years split between Western France and the exclusive city-state of Kitezh. His younger years are nothing worth mention, according to childhood friends. Khadrian has been described as having been a bright, mischievous boy with an appetite for athletics and an uncommonly sharp eye.  
  'The childhood of any born to the Thirteen is often a lonely one,' says one of the man's closest friends, 'but Khadrian made people forget he hailed from one of the most powerful families in Europe. He refused to be served, he refuted superiority, he treated all as his equals... And he had our unbending loyalty for that, whether he wanted it or not.'  
  Khadrian studied at home until the age of fifteen (the common age at which OWL examinations are undertaken), before enrolling in formal education for his later schooling. Attending the prestigious L'academie de Koschey des artes magique, Khadrian proceeded to achieve ten OWLs, seven HOWLs and two tangential COBRAs. At the age of sixteen, he was hand-picked as an apprentice by a world-class Defence Master, going on to study beneath the wizard for two further years.  
  At his coming of age, Khadrian entered international scrutiny as both a member of the Thirteen and a courtier of Tsaress Natal'ya. Defying all assumption, Khadrian failed to enter the arena of big politics, instead taking a low position in the White Guard.  
  'Khadrian was a humanitarian,' his friends say. 'Politics was never an option for him. We all already knew that, come high water, Khadrian would go to war. He was too passionate to do nothing and too skilled for his conscious to allow him to sit out the fight. Khadrian could not see atrocity and say it was somebody else's problem -- he was the type of man determined to fix the world himself.'  
  Khadrian certainly made an impact, first in Russia and then across Magical Europe.  
  Beginning his Gvardiya career as a Dragoon Private, his bravery and skill, both on and off the battlefield, soon saw his promotion to Field Usher of the Cavalry. Following the recapture of Rostov, Khadrian became a Watch Master of the Cavalry -- a position he held for just a week before being again promoted, this time to Lieutenant. From this position, he lead a successful campaign against the Hands, the undead creations of Gateman Colina (a Neapolitan Necromancer still at large in Western Europe).  
  'Nobody thought it could be done,' an exiled citizen of Tsaritsyn recounts. 'The Muggle Enemy was everywhere, right in the city for many months. All we able to do is hide and hope we left alone. We not able to escape the city, for those... things -- dead loved ones walking and killing any who try... And there this arch -- those who go through it never come back. We trapped, until the Gvardiya come to free us. My family owes all to the Sleeper of the Dead. I am much saddened to hear of his passing.'  
  At the beginning of 1943, Khadrian bonded with his school sweetheart. His wife is currently in mourning, but friends reflect on the couple's relationship.  
  'They didn't always get along, you know,' says one of Khadrian's friends. 'They were both of opposites and the same stuff, ran one another up the walls. Sometimes, people around you see what you cannot... and Khadrian, well, he was much as blind to Sigrid as a man can be. We never thought they would ever come to their senses until, one day from no clouds, suddenly they announced they were to bond.  
  'I think that once they realised... they wished no time to waste. Khadrian always said, "Life is short but waiting lists are long." I never knew what he meant until... Anyway, the point being that once they knew what they wanted, both Khadrian and Sigrid seized the day. For all their differences, they are very much alike in that respect.'  
  Another friend:   
  'They were happy, I would say. They were as fire and fyre -- they clashed sometimes but they also kept one another on their toes. It's hard to imagine them apart.'  
  Khadrian Charlusovitch is survived by his widow, a Captain of the Cavalry herself; his sister, parents and the main Potter Lordship line; and countless friends and comrades.  
  Her Imperial Highness, choosing to give a rare public statement, has said, 'Second Major Potter was one of the brightest and best of his generation to hail from our lands. He was swift to deal with threats, slow to anger, and his counsel invaluable. Ourselves, we have held him in high regard over the course of our acquaintance with him, finding him a loyal, trustworthy subject and competent leader. His loss is grievous to not merely we, but to the Russian peoples. His passing in the defence of our Empire is commended by the many he has saved and, honoured in memory, his sacrifice will not be forgotten... Nor will it go unfelt by our enemies.'  
  From the retaking of Rostov and Tsaritsyn, aid freely given to magicless civilians and the undoing of a necromantic army; to becoming the rock the Muggle Enemy broke against in Kursk and the defeat of a traitor at great personal cost, Khadrian Charlusovitch's passing comes at the end of a long line of military and charitable successes. He will be missed by his loved ones and mourned for by many more.  
  
           Second Major Hadrian Charlusovitch  
                           
_1925—1943_

_  
_

 

das Heute, December 14 1943  
obituaries _  
_

 

_Pfeifer, Harold Ingo  
             1943-12-13_

_Potter, Hadrian Charles  
             1943-12-13_

_Preissner, Raimund Timon  
             1943-12-10_

_  
_

 

 

 

das Heute, December 18 1943

 

_NURMENGARD BREAKOUT!  
 Burner of the Black Forest Free_

_Early this morning, government officials  
released a statement requiring all magi-  
cal citizens to remain on high alert follo-  
wing a breakout from Nurmengard. The  
prime escapee is none other than the  
war criminal Hadrian Potter, the separa-  
tist extremist responsible for the destru-  
ction of the Black Forest, at the cost of  
thousands of lives.  
_

_On Monday, we were told that Potter m-  
et his demise in Russia, attempting to  
evade capture. Today, however, this int-  
elligence proves false. Potter, while un-  
conscious upon his capture in the ene-  
my stronghold of Leningrad, was not d-  
ead. Rather than deceased, Potter was  
imprisoned as the perpetrator of the m-  
ass-slaughter of the residents of the H-  
aven Enchanted Forest._

_Today, we find the slippery tricks of our  
enemies have allowed Potter to some-  
how break out of Nurmengard, the mo-  
st secure facility in Europe._

_The government has this information  
to give its loyal citizens:_

_"We have found evidence showing tha-  
t Potter's mental instability affects his u-  
sually woeful magic to the degree he b-  
ecomes, much like a small child, capa-  
ble of deadly fears one of his calibre w-  
ould not usually be able to perform. We  
saw this at Haven, where his rudiment-  
ary runeclusters exploded, eviscerating  
every man, woman and child within a f-  
ive mile radius, and subsequent fires t-  
ore through the heart of the Black Fore-  
st._

_"Potter, unable to control himself, has  
decimated the northeastern walls of N-  
urmengard, where his high-security ce-  
ll was located, and absconded. Though  
his wand was seized upon his capture,  
it is likely Potter will steal another wiza-  
rd's wand with which to arm himself. P-  
otter is insane and, presumably armed,  
very dangerous to all who cross his pa-  
th -- he is to be killed on sight._

_"Any enemy caught sheltering Potter,  
or any of the other criminals he recruit-  
ed to aid in his escape, will swiftly be  
brought to justice."_

_Already, most necessary repairs have  
been made to Nurmengard. We can sl-  
eep safe in our beds knowing that doz-  
ens of spellsmiths and wardsetters are  
currently at the prison facility, increasin-  
g security so something like Potter's br-  
eakout can never occur again. Never b-  
efore has the prison held any criminal  
with magic so uncontrollable it is capab-  
le of destroying walls even when not wi-  
elded by wand; if Nurmengard must ho-  
ld such dangerous captives in order to  
protect us, those will not again find the  
same method of escape possible._

_  
_

 

 

 

 

 

 

La Liberté, August 15 1944  
war correspondent Clement Caron

 

_COLINA FALLS AT BATTLE OF POTIER'S FIELD_

_All citizens of Magical France have been looking over their shoulders  
these past months, aware that, ever since Rome and, as an extension,  
the entirety of Southern Naples were freed of the Visionäire's allies, the  
most dangerous of them has been fighting their way north. Two months  
ago, we all waited with baited breath after hearing Colina's army had ma-  
de it to our enemies in Genoa and seemed to be regroupiing, preparing  
to invade the south. _  
_Today, our plight is over._  
_Colina did indeed begin his invasion last week, crossing the French-G-  
enoan border under the cover of darkness. He has cut a bloody path acr-  
oss the countryside, wreaking havoc on the muggle community in his bid  
to recruit further necromantic abominations to shore up his forces.  As  
many of you will no doubt be aware, some of the only defence against m-  
arionettes mortes and their ilk are swiftly running water and well cast fire,  
leaving young magicals at a great disadvantage in comparison to their a-  
dult counterparts._  
_We need no longer hide away in our homes through the night and clou-  
dy weather, for Gateman Colina has met his end on the Potter Estate, just  
outside of Poitiers. Reports of exactly how this came to pass are uncertain,  
though they all coroberate that the very elements turned against Colina,  
wind and sun and storm cutting through the Dead like Fiendfyre, until none  
remained._  
_It is confirmed that ICLED forces have put the terrible Gateman down  
once and for all. Further, those Dead under his control have all been dest-  
royed and, for those whose deceased loved ones were caught beneath the  
man's will, those marionettes mortes who did not flee have been sent from  
this world, where they may rest in eternal peace._  
_Remain patiend, friends, and remain vigilant. Southerwestern France i_ _s  
now free of any sign of continued occupation by Grindelwald's allies. We  
can only hope that soon the rest of our nation will too be free._

_  
_

 

La Liberté, November 6 1945  
political correspondent Joseph Myers

 

_INTERNATIONAL WAR HERO REVILED BY MINISTRY_

_Following the editorial excitement here at La Liberté surrounding the rel-  
ease of Lieutenant General Heir Hadrian potter, our publication has faced  
great sourness and attempted re _ë_ ducation from several members of our  
Ministry's emergency cabinet. In the days proceeding Heir Potter's release,  
statements were made by our Ministry regarding the war-hero's actions h-  
ere in France, many of them vilifying a man seen by the majority of local  
magicals as a saviour of the people when the government could not (or w-  
ould not) help.  
    Two such statements follow, written as spoken. It must be noted that se-  
veral other statements given have not been published as we here at La lib-  
erte would not wish to distress our genteel readership (needless to say, th-  
ese Ministry personnel failed to stay as polite in their slander as those giv-  
en below).  
    "We [the Ministry] are reluctant to sign papers for the return of Monsieur   
Potter to French wizarding society after the blatant breaking of the Interna-  
tional Statutes of Secrecy he committed in our nation over the course of the  
war and the waste he laid to Quartier Commeçant without care for civilian  
life or livelihood.  --Charlise Legrue, Ministry Spokeswoman, November 1  
    "Potter is little more than a glorified guerrilla warlord, holding no official  
document of power in France. Even in times of strife, to support such a m-  
_ _an and his actions is not permissible to us here [at the Ministry]. I have re-  
commended our department make no arrangements for Potter to return to  
France. Perhaps he should try Angland, where they welcome his so very  
well-bred type?"  --Michael Rattray, Head of the Department of Aurors, N-  
ovember 4  
    We, La Liberté, are unable to contain our horrified outrage at the very i-  
dea a war-hero such as Heir Potter is being treated by our Ministry as no-  
thing more than a common criminal. We seriously urge all who value the  
freedom of our great nation, many of you who surely owe Heir Potter a d-  
ebt yourself, to owl your friends and families across Europe in order to e-  
nsure this awful injustice is not being hidden behind the brooms. Too, we  
urge you to sign the petition demanding the Ministry allow Heir Potter to  
return home.  
    It is a sad day when our own Ministry is complicit in the very injustices  
a war has just been fought to overturn. In the coming weeks, we are extr-  
emely likely to see heads roll over this folly. _

_  
_

 

 

 

La Liberté, January 22 1946  
political correspondent Joseph Myers

 

_WAR HERO HEIR HADRIAN POTTER SPEAKS OUT FOR THE  
           FIRST TIME SINCE HIS RELEASE FROM NURMENGARD_

_It has been just over a month since ex-serviceman Lieutenant Genera-_  
_l Heir Hadrian Potter returned to his ancestral home in Chateau Potiers u-_  
_nder unjust house-arrest. The pressure of various European ministries and_  
_a heavily-supported petition coming from the French magical population i-_  
_tself, finally saw the Ministry buckle and allow the war-hero's return, after_  
_they initially declared him a criminal who would not be allowed back into t-_  
_he country due to the destruction he was 'responsible' for during the Libe-_  
_ration of Paris._  
_Today, following a long silence from Heir Potter himself with regards to_  
_his situation, he has finally spoken out._  
_"Nurmengard was, as you can imagine, an awful place. Most blokes di-_  
_dn't make it out the prison alive or, too often, if they did then they were no_  
_longer sane... I feel... not fortunate to have survived where so many didn't,_  
_but rather guilty. I fully understand why the French Ministry are angry with_  
_me for the damage occurring in Paris in our attempts to free it from tyran-_  
_ny. My battle with the... with the enemy witch known as the Firebird, mus-_  
_t have caused them a lot of grief._  
_"Before my return to my family, I had months to accept the fact I was e-_  
_xiled. It's a bonus that they've let me come back to France now."_  
_When asked what he plans to do now the war is over, Heir Potter told_  
_us:_  
_"I haven't decided what to do with the rest of my life. Honestly, I'm at s-_  
_omething of a loss. Some of my injuries are non-recoverable, meaning I_  
_can't reënter active duty in any capacity. I have received correspondence_  
_from several European ministries with open positions in the international_  
_relations departments, from various well-reputed businesses and from the_  
_Beauxbatons Academy of Magic, who currently find themselves in need_  
_of a new magical defence instructor. As yet, I haven't decided if any of th-_  
_ese vacancies are right for me._  
_Right now, I plan to spend time with my family, catch up on a lot of los-_  
_t sleep, and concentrate on learning everything that went on while I was_  
_imprisoned. I never could convince the guards to get me a subscription to_  
_the papers—shame, I missed the crossword."_  
_It was at this point that Heir Potter laughed. Cheered by his good hum-_  
_our, I informed him of the whispers coming from the Isles, saying that as_  
_one of their nation's main landholders, they wished to honour him with an_  
_Order of Merlin, First Class for his efforts in the war. His response was:_  
_"I'm sure I would be glad to accept, though perhaps they'd be better of-_  
_f pointing their sword at Professor Dumbledore, who is the one who really_  
_saw this terrible war come to a close."_  
_Albus Dumbledore, Defeater of Grindelwald, is known to be an old fam-_  
_ily friend of the Potters, though Heir Potter says he has never met the man_  
_in person. Lord Dumbledore's recent defea..._

Tom grimaced, throwing the paper down in disgust as the interview with Potter devolved into a conversation about Dumbledore's _grand_ achievements. Though, it could be said of Potter that something behind his words came across very... put-out with Tom's former teacher – obviously, a vote in Potter's favour. He considered anyone to be an all right sort if they had no interest in crawling in front of Dumbledore, tossing down flower petals so to stop his feet from having to touch the oh-so-dirty ground. That man was sucked up to the degree even Tom, who did his fare share of toadying up to Slughorn at school, felt nauseated.

"Giving up for now?" Carina asked from the other side of the table, half-hidden behind a stack of papers herself. "It's been a week, Tom. What are you hoping to find?" 

Resting his head in his hands, Tom sighed and admitted, "I don't know. Just... something."

He felt he had learned much in his research of Potter... and yet nothing at all. His importance to Europe was clear from the way the journalists of various nations spoke of him, yet there was a certain foreboding and counterlogical _emptiness_ there, too, as if the man was just a name wrapped around a ghost, an insubstantial giant who faded as soon as none had need of him. The man was a spectre and, apparently, a battle-hardened general who may or may not have razed a whole German community on a whim.

He sighed again and shook his head, slumping back into his chair in exhaustion. He had been reading too long; he could no longer see the trees for the forest.

His friend quirked a quizzical brow at him but did not seem at all surprised when he said nothing in response.

"All right, you keep your hush hush... but I say you need a break. You can't spend all your time down here, going through old papers – you would go mad. Tell you what," she said, picking up her over-robe and throwing it on, "let us head out to L'Orangerie, get a nice lunch, then browse Vertic. I'm sure this can wait for another day."

Yes — Potter could surely wait another day to be properly dissected.

Tom huffed in tired allowance. "I suppose you would be right, dear friend. He smiled at her winningly as they collected their belongings and departed the archives. "I don't suppose your sudden desire to dine at L'Orangerie – when you own a perfectly suitable restaurant yourself, may I add? – has anything to do with a particular tall, cross-eyed waitress, does it?"

"She is _not_ cross-eyed!"

"Oh fine... Dewy-eyed, then."

Carina kept her silence, causing his lips to curl up and nostrils to flare iat withheld amusement.

"Oh, shut up," she eventually demanded, giving him a light shove most unbecoming of a nice, pureblood girl.

Smirking, he let her proceed him up the stairs.

 

 

 

 **That night, he dreamt a dead-as-anything Potter was a frog he intended to examine internally, splayed out on Tom's old work station in Slughorn's classroom.** Just as he was about to start the dissection, Frog Potter hopped up and wrested control of the muggle scalpel from him, sinking it deep into the ball at the base of Tom's own thumb. The ruthless amphibian then proceeded to leap into his hair and pummel him with its large back legs, ripping out chunks of it until his scalp bled and he thought his brain would leak out his ears from the force of the kicking.

"That's what you get for playing with dead things, Tommy Boy!" the frog croaked creepily into his ear.

When Tom woke in the morning, he decided he really ought to reëxamine his life... He would never again allow Carina to talk him into second-helpings of baked Camembert and onion bread so soon before sleeping.

 

 

 


End file.
